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PODCAST

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal

Alastair Leithead

From Our Own Correspondent-style despatches from a former BBC reporter who"s now battling to live off the grid in the Alentejo countryside. Selected audio recordings of his weekly blog which began in 2020. alastairleithead.substack.com

society & culture personal journals

All Episodes

8:58

Coming up for Air

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2025/09/14

So that’s what they mean by the silly season...how did it suddenly become September?It’s been both exhilarating and exhausting, but we couldn’t have asked for a better summer start to the latest stage of our off-grid Portuguese adventure.And this week we enjoyed something which a few months ago would have been utterly terrifying in the face of an rapidly expanding overdraft...a night with no guests.As the kids started to drift back to school and the summer holidays started slowly coming to an end, a

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9:28

It’s actually happening...

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2025/07/27

We’ve heard many encouraging words in the various iterations of these despatches, from Off-Grid and Ignorant, Off-Grid and Open and now Off-Grid and Entertaining (people)...in Portugal.And having welcomed quite a few guests already this summer, we love seeing their words left on the website reviews sections even more.Obviously the five out of fives and the ten out of tens aren’t going to last forever, but right now we’re loving it...and loving the people enjoying our infinity pool, those doing a

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9:09

Fantastic Festas

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2025/06/22

Portugal loves a party, and the summer season smoothly segues from festa straight into to festa.Since most schools were out from early June the festivities have been off to a flying start with both the unusually hot weather arriving unseasonably early this year...and with a football trophy.Beating the old enemy Spain on penalties in the UEFA Nations League final set the tone for the opening holiday weekend, then came Portugal Day and the celebration of the national epic poet was quickly followed by

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8:13

Springing into Summer

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2025/05/21

The metaphors have moved from walking through mud to battling thick undergrowth as the moment in the year has passed when the clay on our land turns to concrete.A very wet winter has given everything an extra spurt of growth, and now that the days are getting longer and sun is getting stronger it’s a jungle out there.The dogs have shed their muddy socks and now bring dust rather than wet pawprints into the house.And the Scarab Cult are back – the annual bombardment of drunken beetles careering into

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8:49

Off Grid and SMUG in Portugal

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2025/04/29

Surprised, interested, shocked, concerned and intrigued all sum up our reaction to the massive power cuts across Portugal and Spain, but perhaps the most appropriate description of our mood was: smug.When the traffic lights went dark, petrol stations closed and panic struck the ice cream shops of the nearby tourist towns on our southwestern coast of Alentejo, we could rest easy.Our freezer-load of wild boar (wild boar) wasn’t defrosting, our water pumps were working well and our wine remained nicely

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9:15

Opening Time

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2025/04/20

For more than three years now there’s been a loop of thinking, building, pushing and waiting...but we’ve finally opened our doors to a flurry of guests.With thanks to friends – and friends of friends – for booking in advance and betting we’d be ready, we had our biggest test so far this Easter holiday week, with six of our seven units filled and a peak of 17 people staying.Despite all the fears of the whole thing descending into a terrible Fawlty Towers epsiode – particularly when two of the

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10:47

We’ve done it!

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2025/03/23

Well, that was easy.After years of waiting and hoping, begging and pushing, of sleepless nights and stressful days our reaction was...understated when the email came through.We’d roped in a trade organisation to help us bother and worry the town hall decision makers and were told everything seemed on track and a decision would be delivered on Friday or Monday.Friday nervously came and went as a warning that unrequited expectations can put a cloud over a weekend.But on Monday morning the letter from

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7:27

The Infinite Staircase

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2025/02/16

Since our Portuguese adventure began, there are certain phrases I never thought I’d say out loud.For example: “Once we discovered pillow tanks we knew we had the answer to rainwater capture.”Then there things I never knew I’d even know, let alone say out loud: “The LPWAN system is like WiFi over kilometres and it helps us blend our mineral salted water with rain to make drinking water...oh, and stops the pool overflowing.”I mean, really.And then there are those truly out-there unexpected sentences:

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8:54

Birthday Presence

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2025/02/02

Birthday presents can reveal a lot about one’s age, stage of life and current circumstances, and this couldn’t have been closer to the truth than on the occasion of my 53rd birthday.I mean this year’s couldn’t have been much more self-explanatory:* two chequered shirts* working dungarees with lots of pockets* steel-capped safety boots* a two-pack of crowbarsI presume this means there’s stuff to do in the country.We are, of course, all aware that Darth Vader knew what Luke Skywalker was getting for

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10:50

The Pleasure of Bleisure

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2025/01/22

Januaries here in Portugal are more palatable than most northern hemisphere winters.For one, I never do the whole Dry January thing because it’s my birthday month, and while we do need more rain, I love the clear chilly mornings which open up into beautiful sunny blue skies.The low arcing winter sun strikes our south facing glass and pours heat into our house – something it doesn’t do in the higher-in-the-sky warmer summer months.And the winter sun also brings enough heat for beach walks in shorts,

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4:52

The "Making Of" Movie

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2024/12/29

Despite the excesses of Christmas, and the many visitors we’ve been welcoming to the valley, I’ve managed to put together a video of our whole building project as it took shape from start to finish.As well as writing updates and despatches, I’ve been photographing and videoing our land ever since we started cutting down our tatty eucalyptus plantation almost four years ago.I’ve documented every stage of the building process from the moment the first building supplies arrived (and we realised this

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7:53

The Big Plan for Our Second Life

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2024/12/08

We started the Google search with escarradeira, then moved on to cuspideira and then we started calling people.A few hours and many phone calls later we realised we just weren’t going to be able to buy any spittoons for our first big wine event at Vale das Estrelas.And there are some pretty compelling statistics for why that might be.Who, you might ask, are the biggest wine consumers in the world...France? Italy?No, and no.At 61.7 litres per person per year, it’s Portugal by a looooong way, so I

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8:38

Real People

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2024/11/23

I’ve recently realised we don’t live like real people.When real people have a problem they call someone: a workman, an expert, a master technician, Ghostbusters, or whoever it might be - and they come with some tools and they solve it.It costs some money and takes some time to arrange, but it works. They know what they are doing, and grumbles aside, they get things working again and real life goes on.But somehow I’ve found myself in the position where I’m kind of responsible for everything...and

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7:54

Opening time

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2024/10/22

Sometimes we thought it would never happen, but four years after moving to Portugal full time and two years after construction work started on our retrospectively but objectively crazy off-grid eco-luxe lodge project we are finally ready to open.The cut-down-and-dug-out eucalyptus forest where our new buildings now stand is a distant memory, the views are as stunning as the first day we found this amazing property, and we’re ready to start tackling a new chapter in our second life: running a tourism

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9:28

Clearing Skies

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2024/09/08

Today I’d like to start with an apology.You’ve been very patient with me as I’ve bumbled and grumbled my way through the past few months, mostly moaning about DIY, crossing the Valley of Death, Losing Perspective and treating my despatches more like therapy sessions.You didn’t sign up to be armchair psychiatrists, so I’m sorry...but thank you.After a bit of self-reflection and a little “enough already” advice from people whose opinions I trust, I would like to announce the official end to my searing

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9:30

Identity Crisis

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2024/08/17

With all the talk about gender at the Olympics I’ve been reassessing how I identify.I’ve spent the last few years trying to move towards something approaching the Oxford English dictionary’s definition of handyman: “a person able or employed to do occasional domestic repairs and minor renovations.”I’ve slowly being moving towards the “Mr Fixit” label my mum used to have for my dad when I was growing up – I’m actually still using some of his tools from the 1950s box with his initials on it.But my

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9:43

The Valley of Death

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2024/07/21

“Well, now you just need to get through the valley of death, don’t you?” was the unexpected message of encouragement from one of our recent guests.I met Professor Eric Lambin at Stanford University in northern California where Ana and I spent a fabulous (albeit COVID-interrupted) back-to-school journalism fellowship year.He might be a world-renowned geographer, a member of the European Commission’s Group of Chief Scientific Advisors and a Blue Planet Prizewinner, but he was also one of the three

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7:32

Losing Perspective

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2024/06/30

I’m sitting on a plane in the skies over Africa trying to put everything we’re doing into perspective.It’s silly o’clock in the morning here, but recently we’ve been no strangers to sleepless nights, recurring dreams about buried pipes bursting and cold sweats over finances and licencing.Big things are happening in the valley, but they’ve been wearing us down.I lost perspective last week on one of the most difficult days on this crazy journey so far.Another no-show from our architect and another

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10:37

Moving Mountains

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2024/06/05

In the end they left with a whimper rather than a bang.Almost un-noticed, things on the building site gradually started disappearing until suddenly there was nothing left – except for a large pile of building rubbish and some unfinished digging work.We’d agreed to pay for some of Justo’s digger time by the hour, and just as I was stressing about which work we needed him to do in what order he started loading it on the back of the truck.“Broken” he shrugged and headed off to the mechanic.He came back

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9:09

Juggling Spinning Plates

Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal ·

2024/05/12

“So when do you open?” is a common question as everything on our hillside starts to look a little more finished.“Last Saturday” is my current response – because that was the original plan.Great friends of ours from our Bangkok days...and their friends...had booked last year to come and stay when the finish date on the building contract was optimistically set for the end of February.“Yes, this February,” was my common response (often to the builders) while we prepared for a group of 28 people – half

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