They say a week is a long time in politics. Well, the same could be said for the house: 2 weeks in and it’s completely gone! Okay, not gone but really only three and a half walls remain. Builders? Demolishers! The two men and their crane have slowly but surely taken away the roof, chimney, floor, inner walls and one outer wall, the extension and the huge pile of enormous stones that had supported the wood burning oven.

They have also removed the huge stone tank and the smaller stone troughs. One in fact was for preserving: the pig meat would be left in there and covered with salt. No freezers in those days.

These are now outside, waiting for us to decide exactly what we are going to do with them. The larger one was sawn into slabs before being lifted out. Some kind of pond we think…

It has been fascinating to watch. You wouldn’t want this landing on your head:

Richard spoke to the builder this morning. It seems, once the demolition part has finished, the next stage is working on the foundations and the extension. The extension, on the first floor, will be for the dining room and Richard’s study. Then there will be a balcony for sitting outside and admiring the view (once the espigueiro has been demolished too). It’s going to look like this (we hope):

Meanwhile, we have been enjoying the warm spring sunshine. We have been on a number of day trips recently, including heading north to Caminha for one of the region’s regular antiques fair. I love browsing these, the range of odds and ends for sale is amazing. We bought a number of things including a couple of metal ends for a bench. This was followed by ice cream overlooking the Minho towards Spain.

Meanwhile we got an email from the water people: they hope to start the work for connecting us to the water supply by the end of May. So that’s June then…