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. <br/><br/><a href="https://alastairleithead.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">alastairleithead.substack.com</a>
Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal
Claim This Podcastby Alastair Leithead
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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. <br/><br/><a href="https://alastairleithead.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">alastairleithead.substack.com</a>
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12/22/2022
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Recent Episodes
May 31, 2026
Simon’s Rainbow
<p>“It’s how we’re related to Drew Barrymore,” is how I’ve always started Simon’s story, so it’s a good way to also bring it to a close after 14 and a half years.</p><p>As a hack I do like headlines.</p><p>“I met Ana playing tennis with her husband...but we got together through clowns and fire,” is a favourite introduction to our love story. More about that another time.</p><p>Oda and Ana found Simon cowering under a table at a fabulous little dog rescue place called Bark n’ B*****s in Los Angeles in early 2012.</p><p>Having arrived in LA from Bangkok six months earlier we had made a few attempts to adopt a dog directly from a shelter, but baffled by bureaucracy which made it extremely difficult to find one, the girls looked elsewhere.</p><p>Bark n’ B*****s was a strange blend of animal accessory shop and zoo, where the dogs were all off leash to hang out with each other and interact with the hopeful foster parents looking for their soul mate, or dæmon if you’re a Philip Pullman His Dark Materials fan.</p><p>It was a chaos of yapping and blurred movement, all with one member of staff on hand with a mop and bucket to deal with any accidents and an air-lock style double door to stop escapees racing out into the Fairfax and Melrose traffic.</p><p>But the dogs could be themselves, not frightened or over-compensating animals alone in a cage at the pound, competing with their neighbours to be rescued.</p><p>I was working away and we wanted us to decide on a dog together...but Simon was incredibly cute and the owners warned he’d soon be snapped up, so after a quick call, the adoption was agreed by all parties and the small ball of fur was brought home.</p><p>We don’t know much about the first three months or so of his life – we picked November 15th as his birthday – but for years he was petrified of metal dustbins and Hispanic men.</p><p>I presume you’re still wondering where Drew Barrymore comes into all this?</p><p>Well, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/drew-barrymore-adopts-puppy-with-fiance.html">she adopted a dog called Oliver</a> from the same place the next day...so Simon had almost certainly sniffed the ass of the Golden Globe-winning actor’s dog.</p><p>I mean we don’t send each other Christmas cards or anything, but we’re close like that 🤞and definitely related.</p><p>And so the only American in the family learned to walk off-leash with Ana on the streets of LA, not to beg and – honest to his Hollywood roots – learned to perform a series of tricks from “high five” to “bang” where a finger gun persuaded him to play dead.</p><p>(The initial trigger word for training was “die” but I questioned that one, as Ana and Oda were shouting it over and over again while rolling him over and popping treats in his mouth. I feared the police might be called).</p><p>He developed his jaunty walk in Los Feliz during the four years Oda spent at the nearby High School and we all lived in California together, and surprised himself – and us – one day when a nearby LA fire truck siren sent him into an involuntary howl and look of confusion which we forever tried to recreate elsewhere through YouTube.</p><p>These wonderful little animals are so interwoven with our lives – constant companions – and it’s only after they have gone that you realise all the moments, big and small, that we shared together.</p><p>Simon was part of almost half of Oda’s life thus far, and was well-travelled, moving from LA to Nairobi, from Nairobi back to northern California via a summer in Sweden, and then to here in Portugal in the middle of COVID.</p><p>The story of Simon’s life is the story of most of the time Ana and I have spent together, and it’s a long story...too long to write about here...and amid a grief that is deep, I can do little more but share some memories.</p><p>Oda used to joke Simon was my son, and this is certainly the hardest blog I’ve written so far. It’s taken me a few weeks to put down on paper.</p><p>Simon was ring-bearer at our friends’ outdoor LA wedding...complete with a tux, top hat and small ring box attached to his collar.</p><p>Ana dispatched him down the red carpet towards the happy couple whom he knew and loved, I lured him offstage with dried chicken jerky and it’s only by the grace of dog that a squirrel didn’t distract him and throw the whole ceremony into a human/dog/squirrel farce.</p><p>In the heat of one Palm Springs summer we had to buy some emergency protective rubber shoes which turned him into Spider Dog at the nearby Joshua Tree boulder park...leaping between rocks he defied gravity for 15 minutes until they were worn through.</p><p>We tried to instil in Simon our love of fancy dress, but as he aged and understood we were laughing at him rather than with him, he developed a very effective strategy for countering such humiliation.</p><p>Dressed as a T-rex, a lobster, a Christmas elf...or in any of the other costumes we acquired...he would simply stand still and look miserable until we took it off.</p><p>Only the matching Kenyan shirts Ana bought for Simon and I were acceptable...probably because they were quite nice shirts.</p><p>It was a full life: he was kidnapped by the FBI, was almost killed by a tick in Kenya which left him with a weak liver which is probably what got him in the end.</p><p>We hiked the Hollywood hills of Griffith Park, ran the tracks of Karura Forest, and explored the Portuguese countryside and coastline together...although he was always more comfortable in Lisbon checking his pee-mail, inhaling gasoline fumes and being the city dog he was born to be.</p><p>Ever the California shade monkey, on the beach he would race ahead to steal a stranger’s towel while they swam, and after cooling off would check if they had any chicken.</p><p>I prolapsed a disk helping him fight off a slum dog in Kenya, and during our year at Stanford he delighted (almost as much as I did) in pooping on rich people’s lawns in Palo Alto...and developed a brief desire to act like a dog and fetch a ball. It didn’t last long.</p><p>At our Nairobi house parties he would slink upstairs for an early night, despite our bar being named after him (the “Dog and Hound” sign beneath a clock bearing our faces always prompted the question “which one’s the dog and which one’s the hound.”)</p><p>A week before he died, with faltering health, eyesight and hearing, he dragged himself all on his own up the hill from our house to join a late night party...his last.</p><p>He died a little before 8.30 in the morning on the last day of our wine retreat. As he was breathing his last, our neighbour Daniel took an amazing photograph of a rainbow in our valley. A weird wind whipped through the house as he slipped away.</p><p>After our retreat guests had left, we dug as deep a hole as we could in the hardened clay...and then we dug it a little deeper until our hands were sore.</p><p>We went to buy an olive tree, stopped off at one of his favourite beaches to take some time to remember, and then came home to place him in the ground and plant the tree above his grave.</p><p>The spot we chose reflected our happiest memory of headstrong, independent Simon – that same jaunty walk developed in LA, tail wagging, as he made his regular morning trips up the drive to visit our neighbour Daniel, where he would bark at the door for a better breakfast than ours.</p><p>Tree planted, we sat back to pour a little beer on the soil, say cheers and thank you to our wonderful little dog – our Sssssssimon, our SiFi, our puppy – for all the wonderful years of companionship he had given us.</p><p>We hung his Kenyan, bead-work rainbow collar on the tree and as we looked up a huge rainbow spread across the sky.</p><p>Being neither religious, nor particularly superstitious, we just enjoyed one of those beautiful moments that provide people faith in something greater than ourselves. Simon’s rainbow above Simon’s tree.</p><p>Next morning I walked up to the spot, cried a little and then turned around to see another giant rainbow behind me above the house.</p><p>Let’s just call it his farewell.</p><p>We haven’t seen a rainbow since...except on the little collar that still hangs on Simon’s tree that we drive past every day and sometimes walk to for one of the most beautiful views of our valley.</p><p>I’ll make a bench soon to place there. We’ve always wanted to use that space. We will be able to sit and contemplate the lives we shared – the unquestioning love and joy he brought to our nomadic lives – and the companionship he shared with us in our Portuguese home.</p><p>As he declined in health, a good friend told us it’s our responsibility to give a dog a good life, but also a good death. When he stopped eating and drinking, did we really want him alone in a sterile veterinary hospital to be put on a drip and kept alive?</p><p>When my father was dying I had fought the hospital hard for the energy drinks and liquid foods to give him more strength to keep him alive. Thankfully a doctor suggested perhaps it would be better to let him slip away. We had said our farewells. It was good advice.</p><p><strong>If you met Simon and have any memories or photos of him you’d like to share please send them to me…I’m going to do a little YouTube collage for us to remember him.</strong></p><p>We made Simon as comfortable as we could. Ana sang him old Swedish songs, I urged him to let go. He had a good life, and dying in our arms, I believe we gave him a good death.</p><p>It’s the first time I have lost a dog. As everyone who has lost a dog knows already, it is hard – it is proper grief – especially perhaps when the grief over the loss of family – of people – has perhaps been pushed down and put off for another time.</p><p>My only remaining family is on Ana’s side.</p><p>One friend said he finally understood why as a child there was a “gap between dogs” as his parents grieved. One approach is leaving time before falling in love with a little ball of fur all over again, knowing our lifespans are out of synch.</p><p>Another is continuity – our other two dogs have helped comfort us, despite Garfunkel’s name now being much harder to explain. Let’s go with Garfie.</p><p>Through chance, circumstance, luck and perhaps with a little help from a rainbow, we stumbled across Ronnie this week...or Ronaldo Romulus to spell out the full name which Oda gave him.</p><p>Ronnie was born on April 1st and is less of a daemon and more of a pure demon.</p><p>As I write Albie and Garfunkel have fled the house to avoid his yapping, pin-sharp teeth nibbling and general annoyance.</p><p>He is joy and energy and love. I’ll tell you more about him next time.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://alastairleithead.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">alastairleithead.substack.com</a>
May 17, 2026
Retreat, retreat...real treat
<p>Before we start, I would like to ask you a favour – it won’t take long and it’ll really help us out. Portugal’s main tourism and hospitality association AHRESP has shortlisted us for a media award for our podcast series <a target="_blank" href="https://wineportugal.substack.com/">Ana & Al’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure</a>. We’re in the final five and the winner is decided by popular vote - your vote. Please could you vote for us? <strong>ONLY TWO DAYS LEFT - PLEASE VOTE TODAY!!</strong>You just need to <a target="_blank" href="https://premiosahresp.com.pt/conteudo/votacoes/vote-edicao-10">click here</a>, put in your name and email address (so they know we’re not cheating), we are the third category (“Media & Comunicação no Turismo”) and we’re the first option. Click on us, scroll down and admit to not being a robot, before clicking the big button to register your vote. Oh, and if you haven’t listened to the podcast yet, you can find it <a target="_blank" href="https://open.substack.com/pub/wineportugal/p/episode-1-starting-local?r=arta&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web">here</a>, or in all the usual places. Thanks!</p><p>The word “retreat” gets bandied around quite a bit in these parts, usually preceded by the words yoga, tai chi or tantric.</p><p>But ever the mavericks, we went out on a limb and chose wine to prefix ours.</p><p>And so the first Wine Retreat at the Valley of the Stars was held last weekend...and it was a rip-roaring success.</p><p>We had a full house of guests from self-proclaimed wine beginners, to a couple so obsessed with vinho that their dog’s called Pinot (Noir)...and we even had a qualified sommelier join the course which was held in partnership with the Hutchins Wine Academy.</p><p>Joanna Hutchins led the daily and sometimes twice-daily masterclasses, teaching participants how to “Taste Like a Somm,” blind-sampling “noble grapes” on her way into the wonderful world of Portuguese wine – with its 350 grape varieties, many of which are a lot easier to drink than they are to pronounce.</p><p>Would-be wine aficionados used Joanna’s wine compass to learn how to talk about what they’re tasting, before learning which Portuguese grapes relate to the famous varieties they’ve had before.</p><p>There were what-goes-with-what classes and a wine-pairing dinner along the lines of “what grows together goes together” and then participants were encouraged to define “their core wine identity” at the end of the four day retreat.</p><p>We kept everyone well fed and entertained between classes, with a Portuguese wine story-tasting and taking them all to the nearby Vicentino for a tour of the vineyard and new winery by its fabulous winemaker Ana Rita Bouça.</p><p><p>Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></p><p>We tried to give everyone a chance to enjoy the peace and quiet and explore the region, hiking down the valley to our friend Jorge’s medronho distillery for a tour and a tasting.</p><p>Ana was queen of the kitchen, creating three fantastic meals a day and pulling out all the stops to keep the tasters on track</p><p>I did my best to keep the charcoals hot for black pork and grilled fish, and we were blown away by how so many people from such different backgrounds bonded over the (many) bottles.</p><p>Aged from 30 to 90, participants travelled from as far away as North Carolina and Shanghai to this wild west coast of Portugal’s Alentejo and tasted well in excess of 50 different wines.</p><p>Among them was Prof Bob Lauterborn – one of the original Mad Men (“I drank beer rather than martinis”) whose academic work led him to create the famous marketing discipline of “the four Cs” (Consumer, Cost, Convenience & Communication).</p><p>This was a joint 90th birthday and pre-wedding trip with his grandson Evan.</p><p>We had ex-journalists – a former BBC colleague – business folk and a fabulous American couple who have recently retired to Portugal from the US.</p><p>It was a first for us all, but we were delighted with the way it went...and the wonderful feedback we received from the pioneer gang of wine retreaters.</p><p>We enjoyed it so much we’re already getting excited about the next one we will be hosting in October.</p><p>Running from 1st-5th it’ll be even better...we already have a few folks interested, so if you’re keen to join, please drop us a line for the details as we suspect the next one might be a sell out!</p><p>And while wine is definitely our thing we also have a couple of yoga and Tai Chi retreats coming up later in the year...and a wedding as well...off grid? Absolutely...and entertaining!</p><p>And as spring marches ever towards summer and the weeds increase my land-cleaning workload by the day (yes, I am definitely starting the strimming this week!), the wine retreat was just one highlight of early May.</p><p>We had a big 50th birthday party celebration featuring some of our favourite friends from Bangkok days – a fabulous festa of pig spitting, oyster shucking, Portuguese champagne popping and silent disco dancing.</p><p>We are so grateful that our pal Isabell Poppelbaum picked our piece of Portugal to celebrate her birthday – and it was amazing to spend time with her and all the old friends she brought along for the weekend.</p><p>We hiked the coastline to build up an appetite for a lavish lunch at O Sacas – our favourite restaurant in the region – and had loads of extra help from our friends here in the area so we could join in the celebrations as well as keeping the guests fed and watered.</p><p></p><p>And this weekend we welcomed the winners of the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.sovereignartfoundation.com/the-sovereign-portuguese-art-prize/">Sovereign Art Prize</a> Gala silent auction to stay with us here in sunny Odemira for a crash course in coastal Alentejo.</p><p>With thanks to the legendary Howard Bilton for inviting us to donate a prize, we were delighted to hear stories from Hong Kong and from around the world from the winners.</p><p>Canadians David and Liz even brought their lovely friends Carey and Kimberley along for a weekend of winetasting, walking and exploring...and we hope they’ll be back soon and spreading the word among their friends in Lisbon and beyond.</p><p>It’s only mid-May, but we’re delighted how things have got off to such a busy start.</p><p>July and August are always crazy here, but with 30C predicted for the week ahead, now is a great time to come and see us.</p><p>The flowers are in full bloom, our young vines are starting to get themselves properly established, and everything is blooming thanks to all the sunshine and all the winter rain.</p><p>Come and see us – we’ll offering a special discount for all our readers from now until the end of June.</p><p>Just book on our website and enter the code JOYOFJUNE to get 15% off.</p><p>* And don’t forget to vote for us and help us win an award. Here’s a video to show you how…</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://alastairleithead.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">alastairleithead.substack.com</a>
April 19, 2026
Planting the Vineyard
<p>For the best part of six years, a crazy combination of ambition, naivety, mis-placed confidence and pig-headed determination has created Vale das Estrelas.</p><p>It’s living proof that ridiculous ideas which might just work, can actually work.</p><p>Continuing the theme of doing something which creates far more work than we actually have time to spend...and so utterly outside our comfort zone that it shouldn’t really be possible...we have planted a vineyard.</p><p>Just a small one...but if you’ve ever planted 1,000 grape vines by hand you’ll know it’s not that small.</p><p>And we’ve been doing it all against the clock.</p><p>The only remaining memory of the wet winter is the lush greenery taking over the valley and the flowers now springing into life.</p><p>The beautiful white and yellow esteva rock rose blooms are bursting out across the hillsides of Alentejo as the race is on to get the good plants in and the bad plants out before everything gets a lot...harder.</p><p>Summer arrived this week with temperatures in the mid 20Cs, and working outside in the middle of the day started getting uncomfortable again.</p><p>The weeds which used to easily just lift up out of the gravel paths are now set in stone as the soaked clay soil is turning into concrete and muddy cars become dusty cars.</p><p>At least the vines are in – and a few trees and shrubs alongside them. Hopefully a few more of the plants and bushes we’ve been buying will be in the ground over the next few days...when the attention will turn to cutting back brush to abide by fire prevention laws.</p><p><p>Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it.</p></p><p>Planting a vineyard – it turns out – requires a lot of planning and persuading people with machines to get a series of things happening on time and in order.</p><p>In the background was always the question of could we afford the time and money of another project, versus could we afford not to convert the dusty big space behind the houses into something beautiful...the first thing people see as they arrive at the Valley of the Stars.</p><p>We always planned to plant a vineyard of Portuguese grapes – not because we know what we’re doing, but because we like to learn and tell the story.</p><p>I’d had high hopes for a field blend – a traditional Portuguese insurance policy mix of many different grapes all harvested together when most are ripe and ready and only a few are either green or raisins.</p><p>But over the last couple of years continuing our wine journey through Alentejo we’ve been seeking advice from all sides...and after deciding this would be the year to plant, the stalking of anyone who would still pick up the phone has only intensified.</p><p>We’ve been worrying winemakers in the way stray dogs worry sheep.</p><p>But that’s not all: we’ve been annoying oenologists, vexing viticulturists, aggravating agriculturalists, irritating irrigation experts and getting on grape growers nerves.</p><p>We’ve stretched “friendly advice” to its limits.</p><p>We’ve asked everyone what we should do – at least twice – and have been sending a barrage of texts and videos: “Is this how we should water the plants?” I whined.</p><p>“Is it too much water? Is it not enough? Did they go in early enough? Did they go in too late? Will they sprout? They’re not sprouting. Are they dead? Maybe they’re still sleeping.”</p><p>And that’s just been the last week of worries for a would-be winemaker.</p><p>It all started much earlier with a few friends and friends of friends in the know and in the business dropping by to advise us how to grow the best grapes and make the best wine from our cleared eucalyptus forest.</p><p>The patch of fast-growing, soil-poisoning, water-hungry monocrop on our land wasn’t well maintained and so one of the first things we did was cut the whole thing forest to make way for the new houses.</p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://open.substack.com/pub/alastairleithead/p/a-broken-heart?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web">Once Lionel the chainsaw man had flattened the forest for free</a> and sliced the wood up into half meter lengths to sell to bakers, we brought in a bulldozer to dig out the roots...and then another one to cut a trench around the perimeter and bury them.</p><p>We pondered the standing water in winters, tested the soil, checked the profile and realised we had about 40cm of nutrient-starved soil atop a thick layer of solid clay.</p><p>It was such a hard layer that the pine trees which had managed to find enough light to compete with the eucalyptus had roots growing sideways rather than down – which is why they toppled over in the winter winds.</p><p>It was established early on that we would have to break that clay crust to give the grapes a good chance to grow down and tap into the water which would be retained through the heat of summer in the clay.</p><p>Planting a vineyard isn’t rocket science – it’s farming. Sadly, I’m neither a rocket scientist or a farmer.</p><p>“Winemaking starts in the field” we were told: in our case a large flat one of about half a hectare.</p><p>It’s always been my job – and my approach to this crazy new life – to gather information from all possible sides and then either write up the story or implement the findings.</p><p>But sometimes gathering too much information from too many people can hamper decision making by flooding the zone, to quote a phrase.</p><p>At the end of it all we had to make the big decisions: which varieties, how far apart, how would they be guided to grow, how would they be irrigated?</p><p>The winemaking stuff, we have been assured, isn’t something to worry about for at least a few years.</p><p><p>Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></p><p>We are hugely grateful to everyone who has advised us – and apologise here and now to Hamilton Reis, Mauro Azóia, Miguel Mimoso, Ana-Rita Bouça, Niels Ulmers, Carsten Jensen, Dorina and Luisa Lindemann...and the many others involved in the making of this movie...for either not doing what they said, or not doing it well enough.</p><p>And in my defence, everyone I asked had a slightly different idea of what we should do.</p><p>We leaned heavily on Hamilton – the famous Mouchão winemaker with his own wonderful <a target="_blank" href="https://natusvini.pt">Natus Vini winery</a> – who planted not just his own vineyard recently, but also many hectares of the grapes growing in our vicinity over the past 20 years.</p><p>And on speed-dial was patient Mauro – of <a target="_blank" href="https://grandesescolhas.com/vidigal-wines-quando-a-sorte-bate-a-porta-6/">Porta 6</a> fame, but also a wonderful small-production winemaker at <a target="_blank" href="https://www.binhao.pt/en/velvet-boutique-wines">Velvet Boutique</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://artisansterroir.com">Artisan’s Terroir</a> who creates our own-label wine (while we wait for our new guys to get producing).</p><p>The first big decision was the grape varieties, whittled down to just three: Castelão for the red and Arinto and Alvarinho in the white.</p><p>The field isn’t square and amid a confusion of measurements and drone photographs I left the geometry to ChatGPT which advised 800 grapes would be sufficient.</p><p>Once we ploughed and were prepping to plant, by putting in wooden posts and stretching long lengths of wire marked with tape every 1.5m (the distance between each plant), we realised it was nearer 1,000 and so upped our Castelão order to 600, settling on 200 for each of the two whites.</p><p>The delivery of one thousand grape vines was much more straightforward than I expected.</p><p>It was a lot easier than receiving the 25 tonnes of compost in a 16m truck, finding a bulldozer with a big enough “ripper” to cut deep through the clay, and much easier than planting 1,000 vines.</p><p>Like many of the busy delivery people who buzz up and down this coast the woman delivering <a target="_blank" href="https://plansel.com/viveiros/">Plansel’s </a>plants wanted to meet at the local petrol station rather than venturing into our valley.</p><p>You can listen to the story of how our grape vines were grafted in the third episode of our podcast series Ana & Al’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure, in all the usual podcast places or here:</p><p>I’ll be going into a lot more detail about creating our vineyard on <a target="_blank" href="https://wineportugal.substack.com/">The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure blog</a>, so do sign up if you’re interested.</p><p>I didn’t even need to hitch up the trailer – they came tightly packed and chilled in five small boxes.</p><p>Of course that was the last part of the puzzle. First of all our local cow king farmer António “O Rei das Vacas” Oliveira, and his fabulously helpful son Gonçalo had to plough, distribute the organic material and plough again...all amid a much-changing weather forecast.</p><p>Once the ripper did it’s work cutting through the clay in a day it was over to us, to Krishna and José, and with friends and guests Andrew Major and Howard Fenwick, Joanna Hutchins and Paul McGibney.</p><p>It all took a lot longer than we expected.</p><p>The grapes languished in bathtubs with their roots under water until we were ready for each bundle of them and five days after arriving all the plants were in.</p><p>Rather than providing the vines with the usual wire trellis, we favoured “Bushvine” as they call it in South Africa – each plant clinging to its own bamboo stick and growing individually into a little bush.</p><p>Local irrigation expert and general good-egg Cristiano taught us how best to run the water pipes and gave me a shopping list which he and his brother turned into a working irrigation system in a couple of hours.</p><p>Automation will come soon, but for now the grapes have been given a good soaking – forcing the air bubbles away from the roots which everyone tells us is important.</p><p>Now we wait. We hold our nerve and don’t give them too much water so they learn to grow deep roots down through the clay. Let’s hope the plants wake up soon and like their new home.</p><p>* <strong>If you want to escape into the country, get away from it all and check out our new vineyard, next weekend is a great time to visit Odemira – the April 25</strong><strong>th</strong><strong> celebrations commemorating Portugal’s 1974 Carnation Revolution are a thing to behold. Come and see us!</strong></p><p>* And it’s your last chance to sign up for the <strong>Wine Retreat</strong> which we’re running with the Hutchins Wine Academy Thursday 7th May - Monday 11th May. We have just two places left.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://alastairleithead.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">alastairleithead.substack.com</a>
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Frequently asked questions
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- What is Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal?
- How often does this podcast release new episodes?
This podcast updates weekly.
- Where can I listen to this podcast?
This podcast is available on 8 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
- Does this podcast accept guests?
No, this podcast does not typically feature guests.
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