7 Years Off-Grid in Portugal: Part 2 - The Mountain (Months 7-12)

In Part 1, I bought land sight unseen, survived 46-degree heat in a bell tent, watched paradise turn into chaos, and gambled everything on a 15-hectare mountain property with a 6-month deadline to pay it off.

This is what happened next: wasps, sinkholes, landslides, a bucket for a toilet, and a race against time that would determine whether I’d keep the land or lose everything.*

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Arriving at the Mountain: Wasps, Dark Green Walls, and Reality

I’d escaped the chaos of the valley. Found 15 hectares of peace.

Put down a deposit and moved in with nothing but hope and a six-month deadline to sell my UK house.

All the buildings on the land had habitation licenses, so I’d be able to rebuild them legally. That was a huge relief. But first, I had to survive.

I thought the hard part was over.

I was wrong.

Fighting Wasps in the Dark to Reach My Front Door

When I arrived, the house was completely overgrown with grape vines. And the grapes were full of hundreds of wasps. I couldn’t even get into the property properly without risking getting stung to pieces.

So I waited until dark. Cut the vines back in the night when the wasps were sleeping. Hacking away in the blackness just to reach my own front door.

That was day one.

The inside of the house was painted dark green. I tried lighting candles. Even a hundred of them barely made a dent. The walls just swallowed the light.

That’s when I started to understand how the old farmers had lived here. Work with the sun. Dinner before dark. Bed. No light needed.

All that was in the house before was a bed, wooden chair and old table in the lounge and some cooking pots and a few plates in an old shelf in the soon to be kitchen.

So simple and functional. No home comforts just getting on with the work that was needed.

Their whole lives built around the rhythm of the day. No fighting it. Just accepting it.

Painting Everything White Just to See

The first thing I did was paint the whole interior white. Every wall. Every room. So the candles would actually work.

Then the first week hit. The temperature dropped. Freezing cold. Wind howling through every gap in the doors and windows. Rain hammering down day after day.

Winter Survival: Open Fire, Bucket Toilet, and Bin Furniture

I made an open fire in the room that would later become the kitchen. No log burner. Just flames on stone, the way the old farmers had done it for generations.

I slept on the floor with the dogs pressed against me for warmth. All of us huddled next to the flames, listening to the wind scream through the gaps.

The Bucket Toilet Reality

I was using a bucket as my toilet. That was the reality. No plumbing. No septic. Just a man, a bucket, and whatever dignity I could hold onto.

For water, I had a gravity-fed tap to wash my hands and myself. Drinking water I collected from the village in containers and drove them back up the mountain.

I was collecting furniture from next to the bins in town. Old chairs. Sofas with broken springs. Tables with legs missing that I’d replace or prop up with rocks. Everything I had was salvaged, repaired, or improvised.

I lay there in the firelight, wet, exhausted, surrounded by bin furniture in freshly painted white walls, and thought to myself: what have I done?

When the Mountain Started Falling Apart

Then the land started falling apart.

Sinkholes appeared across the property. One day the ground would be solid, the next there’d be a hole you could lose a dog in.

Then the landslides started. Whole sections of terrace just giving way and sliding down the mountain.

I didn’t understand what was happening at first.

Discovering the Ancient Drainage Channels

Then I discovered the channels.

Behind every terrace on the mountain were ancient drainage channels carved into the earth. Generations of farmers had dug them to direct the rainwater safely down the hillside.

But they’d become overgrown. Blocked. Forgotten. And now the water had nowhere to go except through the land itself.

So I started digging.

In the pouring rain. Freezing cold. Alone.

Digging Two Kilometres of Channels by Hand

From the top of the mountain all the way to the bottom. Five different channels across the property. If I stopped at any point, that terrace would flood and slide. So I couldn’t stop.

I must have dug two kilometres of channels by hand.

My back screamed. My hands blistered and bled. But slowly, the water started flowing where it was supposed to flow. The sinkholes stopped appearing. The landslides stopped.

I’d fixed it.

But I realised something important: having 15 hectares sounded like freedom, but nobody told me how much work it would take to hold a mountain together.

This wasn’t just land. It was a responsibility. A relationship. The mountain would give me everything I needed, but only if I showed up for it every single day.

I was beginning to understand.

The Land I Thought I Owned (But Didn’t)

Then I discovered I didn’t actually own what I thought I owned.

The original land was supposed to be 20 hectares. I’d found a beautiful old ruin at the back of the property and went to get permission to rebuild it. That’s when I was told it wasn’t my ruin. Even though it was clearly inside my boundary on the map.

Welcome to rural Portugal.

When the Farmer Showed Me the Real Boundaries

I asked the old farmer where the real boundaries were. He walked me around and showed me the actual lines his family had known for generations. The maps meant nothing out here. The farmers knew the truth.

Turned out I’d lost 5 hectares.

At first I was gutted. But then I thought about it differently. Five less hectares to manage. Five less hectares of channels to dig. Five less hectares of landslides to prevent.

The people who sold me the land reduced the price to compensate.

Win win, really.

So now I had 15 hectares. Still more than enough. Still big enough that no one could surround me. Still mine.

Meeting the Neighbours (Including a Tantric Retreat Centre)

Then the rains stopped. And the neighbours started coming out.

When I say neighbours, I mean people who lived 2km away. We’d meet on the tracks between our lands. Stop and chat. Share stories. Slowly get to know each other.

One of my neighbours came to help clear the barns of all the old hay so she could give it to her horses. Win win for us both.

Discovering Paradise Next Door

One day I got invited for dinner at a property nearby. Turned out it was a tantric retreat centre.

When I arrived I was like… wow. I’ve moved next door to a paradise full of beautiful tantric women. Is this heaven?

Things were definitely looking up.

The Portuguese Farmer Who Taught Me Everything

Then I saw the old Portuguese farmer from down the hill again.

He came to my door with a translator and asked permission to still walk his goats on my land.

The land I’d bought had belonged to his brother, who had died a couple of years before I moved there.

I told him: you have more right to use this land than I ever will. It’s been in your family for generations.

Please. Walk wherever you want.

Learning from a Lifetime of Portuguese Farming Wisdom

Watching him move across my land taught me more than any book ever could.

He’d hit bushes with his stick as he walked. Not hard. Just tap, tap, tap. Slowly breaking them down over time. A clever way to manage overgrowth without having to do big clearings all at once. Little by little, every day, until the branches gave way.

He’d point at olive trees with his stick to show me where to cut them back for the best growth. No words needed. Just a weathered hand and a lifetime of knowledge.

Every two weeks he’d bring me cheese made from the goats’ milk. A kind of exchange for letting them graze on my grass. I’d see him coming up the track, goats trailing behind, cheese wrapped in cloth under his arm.

He was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. We got on well despite the language difficulties.

Farmer Portuguese isn’t real Portuguese. They shorten everything. Miss out entire words. But somehow, we managed. We always managed.

The Builder Deal That Changed Everything

Then I caught another break.

A woman lived on the property next door. She had an English builder working on her place. Good with his hands. He was looking for land of his own but had no money.

So I made him a deal.

Trading My Valley Land for 2.5 Years of Labour

I’d pay him 10 euros an hour to work on my place. Install the infrastructure I needed. Kitchen. Bathroom. Solar. Lighting. Plugs. All of it. In exchange, I’d give him my old land in the valley and he would work the hours until the debt was paid off. Worked out at roughly 2.5 years of labour in the end.

He loved noise. Loved neighbours. The chaos that had driven me away was exactly what he wanted.

He moved into my old place straight away and started coming five days a week to work on the main house.

While he built, I focused on the land.

Cleaning out the old stone barns next to the house. Imagining what they could become.

Maybe more accommodation. An Airbnb. A retreat space. Something. I wasn’t quite sure yet.

I needed to understand this place first.

Building Basic Infrastructure: From Bucket to Bathroom

Eventually the toilet bucket I’d been using became a vermicomposting toilet. Looked and worked like a normal toilet, but fed into a tank outside filled with worms. They did all the work. No septic system needed.

Once the solar was installed, I put a pump on the natural spring lower down the land. It fed into an IBC container that would fill up and then supply the whole house. Fresh mountain spring water on tap. No more trips to the village.

Another small victory. Then another. Slowly, the house was becoming a home.

The mountain wasn’t going to reveal its secrets overnight. And neither was I going to figure out my future by rushing.

For now, there was digging to do. Channels to clear. A house to build. And a UK property that needed to sell before my six months ran out.

The Six-Month Countdown: Would I Lose Everything?

The clock was ticking.

Month one passed. Nothing.

Month two. A few viewings. No offers.

Month three. The doubt started creeping in. What if it doesn’t sell? What if I lose everything?

Month four. Still nothing solid. I’d wake up in the night doing the maths in my head. Running out of options.

Month five. Two weeks left before the deadline.

The Call That Changed Everything

Then the call came.

Sold.

My ex-girlfriend had gone back to the UK to clear the house out for me, helped by a friend who’d been renting it. She handled everything I couldn’t handle from a mountainside in Portugal.

With two weeks to spare, the money came through.

I paid off the land.

It was mine. All 15 hectares. No debt. No deadline. No one could take it from me.

I stood on the mountain that evening and looked out across the valley. The sun was setting. The dogs were at my feet.

And for the first time since I’d arrived in Portugal, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years.

Safe.

But the work had to continue. There were 3 houses to rebuild, a massive land to maintain, and help was needed.

So the story didn’t end there…

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This is Part 2 of my 7-year off-grid journey in Portugal.

The land was mine. The infrastructure was coming together. But rebuilding three houses on a mountain, alone, would push me to my absolute limits. What happened next taught me about resilience, community, and what it takes to build something that lasts.

Read Part 3: Rebuilding the Mountain → coming soon

👉 Back to Part 1: The First 6 Months →

https://www.wylderoots.org/post/7-years-off-grid-in-portugal-part-1-the-dream-vs-reality-first-6-months

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From bucket toilets to mountain spring water. From salvaged furniture to stone houses. From desperation to safety. This is what real transformation looks like.

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Share your own off-grid challenges in the comments below. What’s the hardest part of starting over?