Kids leaving home & Yoga at Christmas in the Bajan Sun - by Vonetta

We've been having another super summer here at Vale de Moses. So many guests once again have made long trips from all over the world to spend a week or 2 with us in our home in these remote Portuguese mountains. Doesn't feel so remote here when we're surrounded by all these lovely people. You should see some of their sweet photos of their stays on our FB page and some kind words in reviews on our new Trip Advisor page.

We’ve had tremendous help from lots of great people too. Our Karma volunteers have relentlessly and cheerily washed dishes and tidied spaces. Katherine Smith has continually created culinary delights in our kitchen, wrote our first retreat menu cookbook and teaches her afternoon yin yoga classes. Fleur van Hille from Amsterdam is sadly leaving us today after running 4 inspirational vinyasas flow retreats in July and August. And Peter Packard, who Maria Mercati (my TCM teacher from Body Harmonics in the UK) sent us, has been brilliantly massaging our guests this summer and treated me too with regular with acupuncture and Thai, keeping my own body in good energetic shape for teaching and treating everyone that comes here.

Pete and I have decided to run our first Thai Massage Course with Yoga this October, 19th to 25th. We're really looking forward to it. If it goes well, we plan to run a few more courses next year too.

Big family changes are on the close horizon for us in the next few weeks. My Eloise got accepted into Art School in Lisbon, António Arroio. So she’ll be leaving home end of September to stay with a family there until we can find a place to rent together in Lisbon from January onwards. Gulp.

Joshua is also moving to Castelo Branco to finish off his last year at a new school, Nuno Alvares, studying Physics. He’s in England at the moment with Andy’s folks touring a few universities to consider. So both Eli and Josh are leaving home at the same time in under a month!! A little earlier than we had thought they would. Andy keeps telling me "breathe, Vonetta, breathe. Change is inevitable. It’s all gonna be OK."

I went shopping with Ellie and a friend of mine the other day and picked up a number of items of clothing I felt best represented my present incarnation as Von.  As I lifted up the choices for my friend’s inspection, I was thinking “yep, nice look”.  My friend raised her nose, smiled out of the corner of her mouth and noted “you can take the island girl to the city and through the desert and place her in the middle of the Portuguese forest, but you definitely can’t take the island out of the girl!”  I looked again at the clothes, one with a palm tree printed over bright magenta, others with orange, sunshine yellow or cobalt blue fabric.  I smiled back recognising the truth of her statement. I am an island girl and that is never going to change, no matter how far I have come since leaving Barbados at 17.  I left the shops that day knowing what I really wanted. To go home to that beautiful, feisty tiny rock in the middle of the cobalt Caribbean Sea, and teach some yoga surrounded by real palm trees.

Teaching and living in a temperate climate like this in Portugal is exciting.  As the seasons change, so too does my yoga practice.  More expansive in the summer months. More internalised in the cold winter months. Feeling the surge of energy as the Spring sap rises in the forest, and being refreshed by the Autumn rains as they douse the acute dryness of our long summer months. Yet there is nothing like practicing in a constant climate - the day and night temperatures are relatively stable in Barbados. Even the sea temperature varies little.  Air humidity is moist with a cooling drying sea breeze.  This constant temperature means that the body has the opportunity to remain in a pretty constant state of muscular relaxation. There are no sudden cold chills to shorten the back of the neck and lock the hips.  Flexibility is greatly improved by consistency, not only consistency of practice but also consistency of environment.

While recently away with Andy and the kids (and Sally & Jonathan my inlaws) on the Costa Vicentina in June, down on the South West gorgeousness of Portugal, I needed a vigorous practice of backbends, handstands and salutations before my body temperature was high enough to cope with the invigorating Atlantic sea.  It was fun to run around, get hot and then charge into the ocean, but I definitely felt the need for strength over flexibility.  While lying on the sand recovering from the shock and thrill of the cold water, I found my memory drawing me to a particular practice time I experienced last year when we ventured back to Barbados.  It was one of those practices you don’t forget easily. Instant ecstasy.

Everything feels more alive when we practice outside especially with the song of tropical birds in the ears and a turn to face the waves of the ocean or a monkey stealing a mango from its tree. A pre heated supple body, softened by an early morning swim in warm clear water retreating from the Caribbean sun to a shaded veranda for a long slow indulgence in the fine art of stretching and breathing.  I began the practice that morning with breath work and was immediately delighted by the ease of my breath. Warm salty water into the nose from the sea rather than from my usual neti pot meant my breathing was silky smooth and entirely relaxed.

In my sun salutations, I felt like a hot knife moving through room temperature butter as all 650 plus muscles in my body surrendered to the Bajan sun. There was no crunch in the spine as I slid from Chaturanga Dandasana to Updog.  I was able to assess the liquid nature of my spine as I folded into forward bends and the strength of fully relaxed muscles as I sprung into Full Wheel.  For the first time in several years I was able to effortlessly place both feet behind my head and sit, it was so good to experience easy open hips.  I emerged from Yoga Nidrasana thinking once again, “This yoga shit is the bomb”.  My mind was quieted and utterly present as the gentle swish of the lapping sea, placed me in a mellow mood.  I walked along the beach after practice towards the kids snorkling with Andy out on the reef and as my entire pelvis swayed effortlessly from left to right I lost the sensation of having bones or separate parts.  The supple nature of my spine made me feel somehow taller and thinner.  Liquefied is the word that most aptly describes the experience of practicing yoga in Barbados. My nervous system in tune with my mood worked with me and everything within flowed as one.

My practice on the beach in Barbados that day made me realise that I wanted to find a way for others to feel this comfortable while practicing yoga. For those who struggle with tight hamstrings, stiff hips and a rigid lower back, retreating to my little island might be just the thing for them to escape the pain and discomfort in their bodies that colder northern winters often bring. When we got back to Portugal we decided we’d run retreats there one day if we ever found the right place.

Bathsheba along the East Coast of the island has always been my favourite part of the island.  Our Sunday afternoon family outings there as a child always involved a drive and rest watching the waves of the Atlantic ocean crashing against the shore.  My mum and my dad both live in more populated and buzzing parts of the island. Bathsheba in contrast ushers in an energy of reverence as the small hills and dunes formed out of the flat chalk areas of the rest of the island and scenes of busy hotels and home districts fade to small wooden chattel houses and fecund tropical vegetation.  No matter the time of year we could always find a good breeze to lift the spirits and dry away the tropical humidity, easing us into serenity. Bathsheba gave me this as a child and 25 years later nothing has changed, serenity is still very much the spirit of the east coast.

Earlier this year my Dad called to say he had found us the perfect place to have Yoga Retreats and it was, of course, in Bathsheba.  A newly built retreat called Lush Life with a dozen or so luxury eco lodges, set in an 18 acre palm tree forest far from the often overcrowded parts of the island with their big hotels. We checked out their website and Youtube video and I immediately knew where we were going to be spending our winters from here on in, out of the European wet and cold and in with the new, hot Christmases of yoga and gentle rebalancing and maybe a little partying at night on the lively South Coast bars and clubs.

So we’re off to Barbados this December. Just for a couple of weeks this time. December 16-30. In these retreat weeks we will yoga chill, immerse ourselves in the tropical heat, moisture and natural Vitamin D boost of the sun, and explore a more supple, yielding, willing, adaptable body, possibly a little freer from our winter aches and pains.

My shopping friend was right, I am indeed still Vonnie from Barbados and I’m sooo looking forward to sharing my little island with those coming with us this Christmas.

When we return to Portugal in the New Year, it will be to a new phase of our lives, based more in Lisbon, until our 2015 yoga retreat season starts again at Vale de Moses.  We will have spent 7 years living here full time in this beautiful peaceful forested valley, and from January our adventure and our daughter are drawing us to the charming capital city of Lisbon.  Perhaps we’ll add to our annual retreat calendar, not just more Thai Massage courses and winter trips to Barbados, but also some short Spring and Autumn city breaks in Lisbon with yoga classes and treatments. I wonder....:)

Watch this space.

Peace and Love

Vonetta xxx

When it rains, it pours!

I’m lying down surrounded by a horde of cushions on the huge floor level sofa in our newly restored house at Moses, in front of a roaring wood burning stove fire, writing this blog while I wait optimistically for the incessant rains outside to stop. And boy, when it rains here, it really pours.

Over the last month we’ve had a couple of days of beautiful sun, which we’ve taken advantage of to start picking olives from 5 of our 30 olive trees. But for the rest of the time it’s been raining. A few times, even snowing. We had arranged over the course of a couple of weekends in December, for a team of neighbours to pick our trees with us and then do another 70 or so trees at our friends Ian and Merle’s place over the hill. Not surprisingly our neighbours weren’t keen to do so in the rain and the bitter cold so we had to put it on hold. We think the local olive press down the road closes at the end of January so if the weather clears up over the next few weekends we’ll still hopefully be able to gather a few more sacks. As much as Von and I can with our wee hand held olive rakes. If we miss the press, we’ll store the olives in barrels of brine and orange peel to eat rather than use for olive oil. It will be an enormous amount of olives, yet I reckon Von will get through ours before next year’s harvest time and hopefully we can pick and save some for Ian and Merle to sample from their place when they return again in the Spring. Come back soon peeps, we miss you.

On the 6th January, we said our farewells to Von’s Mum and sister, Arlene and Antoinette, sending them off with a delightful day shopping and moseying around in Lisbon before their flight back to London in the evening. Check out their cameos on the vids below. We miss them loads already and are indebted to them for filling our new place with laughter and above all magnificent memories of our first Christmas at Moses.

Arlene and Annie reflect on their first trip to Portugal…

Since they left us, the only real drama here has been that our highly independent princess of a cat, Angel, almost broke our hearts by taking herself off into the wilderness for a week, the coldest week in Portugal for 20 years with temperatures at night dropping to minus 8 and below. Thankfully Angel returned, unscathed and a little on the hungry side. Apparently, our friends tell us, January is the month that cats tend to disappear like that here in Portugal so I suspect she’ll be off on another wandering expedition shortly. Next time though, we won’t be having kittens about it.

Kids are back at school and Von and I have taken the first fortnight of January to recharge our seriously depleted end of 2008 batteries. Pottering about the house creating some resemblance of order, cooking, cleaning, tidying up the surrounding land, and as I mentioned above, picking and pruning a handful of olive trees. Nothing major. Nothing strenuous. We now feel ready to go for all that is in store for us in 2009, the year we want to build what we came to Portugal to build: our own houses at the top of the hill that we bought in September 07 with the intention of restoring them to live in for the rest of our lives. We’ve written our annual plan and budget, sat with our architect for a day to revise the drawings reflecting all the changes we’ve made in our ideas since the first plans were completed a year ago, and already have a roofing company in place to start the timber framing at the end of January. All set. Ready for action. So although we’re most thankful for the substantial soaking of the land (and us) at the moment, we’re also praying for a break in the daily deluges so we can begin to build once more.

It’s midday and Josh has just returned unexpectedly early from school. Another teachers’ strike he says. He’s drenched from head to toe after his walk down from the village, although behind him outside, I can see the dark rain clouds dissipating a fraction. Yep, there’s even some blue up there in the skies along the valley. Might even be able to get out this afternoon, se Deus quiser. Von’s already spotted the sun and is putting on her boots in front of me. “Right, I'm off.” she says, “It’s sunny at the top. I'm gonna move some stones. You coming?”

Right behind you dear. I'm right behind you.

Anniversarying with the King of the Swingers

One day, back in the life of the jungle, many animals lived together, some in blissful harmony, others engaged constantly in the fight to stay alive. One special animal grew up there and managed to discover the secret to life. And shared it with everyone he met with generosity of heart, humour and a cascading backdrop of monkey music. His secret was simply to enjoy the bare necessities. His name, of course, was Balloo.

Last year, and joyously again this month, we’ve had the great privilege to meet and hang out with Balloo in person, reincarnated in the form of a man from Hereford and his most cool mate and tribe currently holidaying in the nearby abandoned village of Eiro do Miguel over the mountain on the slopes of the Rio Zezere. His human name is Ian Huntingdon, his mate is the inimitable and gorgeous Merla, their two stunning daughters are Evie (12) and Anna (18), Anna’s perfect beau Oli (21), and an old friend of the family, Roger (age and origin unknown).

It was our 14th wedding anniversary on Wednesday. To celebrate, the Winter clan took a long weekend trip to Lisbon with the tribe of Balloo, the King of the Swingers. The 10 of us camped in Monsanto park 15 minutes ride from the centre of the city. Had dinner in one of the quirky old café restaurants in the heart of Lisbon’s Fado district made memorable for the moment when the owner, shortly after taking our orders for fish of the day, strolled over and pulled out of the boot of his old Mercedes, a sack of freshly bought, and probably caught, fish to cook, along with veggies and the eggs for dessert. We climbed and wandered through the capital’s charming streets lined with once grand now slightly dishevelled, tall old stone framed houses dripping with the past and present tapestries of a culturally rich Lisbon: centuries old wobbly limestone cobbled streets; colour filled walls occasionally splashed with sections of those typically Portuguese hand painted tiles; antique black railinged window verandas, from which residents’ laundry hangs cheek by jowel with large canvasses beautifully illustrated with an eclectic mix of sketches and paintings for the latest public art exhibition.

For the weekend’s finale, Ian and Merle arranged a surprise gift for their tribe to thank them all for their previous fortnight of hard labour clearing the land in Eiro do Miguel – tickets to see the Thievery Corporation at the Coliseu. They invited us to join them and what an experience it turned out to be, especially cos it was the first big gig for Josh and Eli, who watched the spectacle of the audience as much as they did the musicians, drummers, singers, rappers and dancers on stage. A most cool way to finish celebrating our 14 year heavenly journey of a marriage dripping with love, romance, adventure and family.

Thank you Balloo and crew. And thank you Lisbon. There’s only one Lisboa. And it’s awesome that this weekend it’s felt that it’s become ours. Our Lisboa. We’ll meet again soon.

Restoration Update: In the pursuit of beauty...

Back at the Moses ranch, River and I have been in full flow, rendering, solving problems, mending, fixing, restoring, more rendering, waiting for wood and materials to arrive, choosing the appropriate heating and water systems to buy, more rendering, but surrounding all of it, is the magic of being able to use our energy and imagination to create. We are so thankful we’ve been given the chance to do this thing with our own hands. These last 2 weeks we’ve been able to move beyond the purely functional tasks to embrace a far more creative process that imprints our own stamp on the function. Using our hands to sculpt the plastering on the walls and over the bedrock, to carve the eucalyptus beam we chain sawed, planed, sanded and heaved into position to support the bedroom floor, to select the prettiest slate lintels for remaking the doorway of the old clay bread oven, and to roll huge boulders into place for the borders of a water channel gutter at the back of the house. It’s just one big art attack (for those of you who’ve ever watched kiddies TV). We are hand sculpting our house and filling it full with romance and love along the way.





As you can tell we’re feeling all loved up at the moment. Not enough time to tell you even half the stories happening here. Just know it is rich. As Merle says, “dripping” with the gorgeousness and fullness of life. School, shopping, building, friends, neighbours, dinners, coffees, passing chats, even the drives and walks to and from these things. Everywhere you look, every landscape you stumble across, every task necessary, every problem solved, every single moment is a an experience to be cherished and treasured because it will never be experienced in that particular way again. Just like the enchanting, colourful, historic and steep streets of Lisbon, we are the tapestry upon which something magnificent and unique is being woven.

And did I mention the sun is still shining hot here? No? Desculpe. It is. Just the icing, or the cherry, or the cream, or all of it on the whole home baked wedding anniversary cake of a life.

Welcome to Moses

Welcome to our new blog all about the journey of our new life project in Amieira, a gorgeous and remote village in the middle of the hills and forests of Central Portugal. It is here that we - "Tom and Jerry", Michelle, Vonetta, Andrew, Joshua, Eloise and our accompanying pets (so far Moses the dog, Angel, Harry and Blue the cats) – have chosen to invest our lives in creating a place of outstanding natural beauty. We are inviting people from all over the world to come to this magnificent place in the hope they too can find peace and healing for their lives.

To find out how we found this place and came together, you can visit our previous blog at http://poopineurope.blogspot.com/ . We are still not sure what we will finally call this project. Several names are flying around including Zion among others but at the moment its simply called Moses, because that's what the first houses we saw and bought have been called for a hundred years. And its also the name of the winters dog. Which, providently, is actually the reason we are all here.

Over the next year we expect to be working unbelievably hard to prepare the land for self sufficiency, renovate our old stone xisto houses, build new accommodation and restaurants out of cob, and install the latest water and power systems ready for guests to stay with us from April 2009. Some people will come to practice yoga. Some might take part in photography and art workshops. Some could fish and explore the relatively undiscovered treasures of this part of the world by foot, by bike, by 4x4 or on horse back. Some will visit just to stop and deeply rest.

Below are a couple of videos to whet your appetite on our progress. Sorry 2 are wonky so you have to turn your head to see them; Andrew is a bit new to all this video publishing thing. We hope to get internet installed next week in "Tom and Jerry's" place so will be better able to publish our progress here every fortnight. Watch this space. We will be open for booking shortly, but in the meantime do get in touch by emailing itscalledmoses@gmail.com or to "Tom and Jerry" or Michelle's emails (we will add these on the contacts shortly).

Vonetta and Michelle putting the final touches on the new state of the art self build composting bins constructed out of mimosa trees:


Vonetta in Monsanto park at the top of Lisbon showing "Jerry" the stunning umbrella pines that she wants to introduce to land at Moses: