I can’t decide if it is the sunshine, the people, the proximity to the sea or the lifestyle that I like the best about the Silver Coast area of Portugal, perhaps a combination of them all. Either way, I can thoroughly recommend it.

Life on our little small holding is blissful, a complete contrast to the tiny East End terraced house we left behind in London. We are on a huge learning curve but our ‘hit and miss’ methods generally seem to work and we are gradually getting the hang of raising pigs and chickens and hope to move on other animals very soon.

We first visited Portugal way back in 1988 (newly married, I was barely more than a child!) and we instantly fell in love with the place. Staying in Caldas da Rainha we explored the area and decided immediately that this place would be part of our lives from now on.

We bought a property that very first trip. OK, so we didn’t exactly splash out, it was a small barn for conversion in the centre of a wonderful village called Olho Marinho, near the medieval town of Obidos. From then on every holiday we had was to the Silver Coast, obviously, we couldn’t stay in the barn (especially once the roof had fallen in…..), but some good friends of ours kindly lent us their apartment in Nazare and so we came to know and love the area.

The little barn remained ‘for conversion’ for quite some years, but finally in 1996 we found the money to employ a marvellous local builder who took on the entire project from applying to the council for permission to the last lick of paint.

It was perfect. Open plan downstairs with two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, and seemed so much bigger than we had imagined.

In summer 2005 I stood on the door step holding our 1 year old baby waiting for my husband to open the front door to our new life. We had finally followed our dream and had sold up, packed up and come over to Portugal for good.

We soon out grew the little house in Olho Marinho and couldn’t wait to move on to stage two of our plan, a small holding. My husband was an enthusiastic but novice gardener and I have always wanted to keep animals; we couldn’t think of a better lifestyle for a growing family. We were quickly able to sell the much loved little house and it didn’t seem to take long to find the perfect spot, two acres of fertile land with an old farm house and outbuildings near Sao Martinho do Porto. It needed a lot of work but by January 2007 we were finally able to move in.