We have reached the final few days of our time here, our longest stay yet, and by the time we get home on the 20th November we will have been away for almost 9 weeks.
We spend our last few days on the island at the cottage, our home from home, and revisiting some of our favourite, and now familiar, walks and places. In the mornings, when the Sao Vicente valley is bathed in sunlight, I read and write, content to enjoy the warm sunshine and beautiful scenery around me. Mid-afternoon, when the valley clouds over we walk down into the village or drive over to Ribiera Brava to claim the sunshine in the south. In the evenings we are happy sitting around a campfire with the stars above us, reminiscing and planning our next adventure; soon we will travel to mainland Portugal for a week or so before going home to the UK for Christmas.
And so, it is time to reflect on our time here and if it will shape our plans for the future in any way. Time away from family and friends provides the opportunity to step back and evaluate what is important. It also gives you the time to think about what you may want in the future. In these times where a conversation is only a 'WhatsApp' or 'Skype' away, it would be easy to convince myself that we are 'in touch' with the people we love. But a phone call is not the same as a hug and a few texts are not really a conversation, and the truth is that I am looking forward to seeing my children, family and friends again, and catching up properly.
That said, we have loved being away together, it has reaffirmed how much we love each other, our compatibility and our shared enjoyment of adventure; it has been refreshing just to think of ourselves and each other, to wake, sleep, eat, do or not do as we please.
It has been truly liberating to have the opportunity to be spontaneous and to have had time to think and talk about what we want, and where we want to travel, in the future.
We will return home to England and prepare for Christmas with our family around us. It is the beginning of a new chapter. After 22 years we will be selling our family home, which is much too big for the two of us now, and have the adventure of finding something smaller in a new place. We are soon to become grandparents for the first time, a huge adventure in itself and one we are looking forward to with excitement. And we have more adventures to plan - places to visit and things to see.
So it is with some reluctance that we leave our 'Perfect Cottage', but it is not a final goodbye, we will be back again soon enough to enjoy this magical island and its restorative tranquility, its spectacular landscape and its enchanting beauty, and until then we have all of the memories we have made here and for those we are truly thankful.
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