Welcome, we are Richard (Rick) and Janet (Janet) Nason now living in Vale de Prazeres, a small village some 7km as the crow flies over the Serra da Gardunha just South-East of Fundão, Portugal – the road journey to Fundão is a winding, sometimes exciting fifteen minutes drive, often in the clouds. Alternatively, a trip on one of the four daily trains will get us there easier in the same timescale, but it does make 3 stops on the way.
The nearest 'big' city is Castelo Branco about 35km to the South where there are a couple of shopping centres, a number of large stores and an extensive industrial area. A similar distance to the North is Covilhã, a university town with a shopping centre.
We are working on this web-blog site to enlighten you about our adventures here in Portugal. Located in the central region just at the edge of the mountains but far from the populous cities of Lisbon and Porto, and even further from the Algarve, we are very lucky. The area is a wonderful mix of traditional and modern Portugal, with a forward-looking local authority.
Trying to learn the Portuguese language is an arduous task but it is important to be able to communicate effectively with local people, we are making progress.
The are many fantastic views in the locality, some local specialities and of course the weather to report on.
As time allows, more content will be added with updates on our work on the house and garden – enjoy!
The site is designed to be mobile and tablet friendly, however, the best experience will be with an HTML5-compliant web browser on a computer using a minimum of 1024×768 display resolution. With the ever-increasing list of devices and web browsers, there could be something that we missed. If you experience a problem viewing the site, notice an error, even just a simple spelling mistake or just have suggestions for improving the content please click here to get in touch and, with your help, we can improve things.
It was always planned to make the site multi-lingual so that it is readable by both English and Portuguese visitors. Unfortunately, the process to make this happen is rather cumbersome and the required time is not available. We will however attempt to add translated versions of each relevant new article as and when they are published.
Update: 10-Feb-2023
Our new fibre internet broadband connection now gives excellent performance with up to 400Mb/s (theoretical) upstream data rate to clients.
The server and other equipment are supported by a UPS device, however, our rural location is subject to wildfires in Summer and frequent power outages during bad weather so sometimes the wider internet connection may simply be unavailable.