Thanks Haywire, we'll invite you guys over when we get there if that's OK. It's going to take a while with administration, the Portuguese love paperwork.

Very few ex-pats in the area but we don't want to be totally isolated. We are one hour from you by car.

Talking of language do you or anyone know of any intensive language courses in the area, maybe Odemira. I can only find these in Porto, Lisbon and Faro.

Good news about the rain, apparently there is a bit of desertification, we want to harvest rainwater and grow crops, something low volume high yield, not citrus, olive or cork.