In January 1981, John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ was number 1 in the UK music charts, and Margaret Thatcher was the prime minister. In Portugal, seven years after the Revolution, the currency was the escudo, and the Algarve was a fishing region known for its sardines and tuna. This was also the month and year when resident Kay Coombes and her husband Pete bought a small farmhouse near Monchique.
Monchique is often described today as a quiet, hillside town with stunning scenery tucked away from the coast. Back then, many roads were dirt tracks, and it took twice as long to reach Portimão or Lagos, when you might pass donkey-drawn carts. There weren’t any supermarkets and only a few estrangeiros living there.
This was how it was when Kay and Pete arrived. They were in their early 30s, travelling from the UK in their camper van, when they came across the Algarve. Loving the place’s natural simplicity, they kept returning over the next few years. On one of those early visits, a chance meeting with a Norwegian paraglider camping at Castelo Beach, near Albufeira, led them to the highest point of the Algarve, via Monchique. They wanted to see if Fóia was a good location for paragliding and very quickly realised it wasn’t! They parked their two vans up for the night regardless. Kay says, “I remember seeing two women getting dropped off by a car, and they set off on foot, into what looked like the middle of nowhere. I thought, imagine living here!”
Back in Albufeira, Kay and Pete got talking to a couple selling crafts on the local market, and they showed a picture of a house they had bought for £2,000 in Monchique. It piqued their interest, and they started to hatch a plan. They sold their property in the UK and bought a small farmhouse down a steep track, with over three hectares of land, and the renovation work began.
They became a curiosity for their local neighbours, who wondered how they were going to, as Kay describes, ‘survive’. There wasn’t any electricity or a phone line, but Pete and Kay persevered, and the neighbours began helping them order building materials and showing them how to work the land, and grow fruit and vegetables. Kay recalls, “It was like going back in time. Produce was difficult to buy, and the couple of little shops in town only seemed to stock tinned fish, and we had to order bread. It seemed very primitive, but for that reason, we were hooked.”
Kay got to observe many of the old traditions and experienced some firsthand, including the annual slaughtering of pigs. Although she didn’t like the initial ‘deed’, the work that followed brought the whole community together, and the preparation and processing of the meat went on for days. Kay had her fair share of jobs, including making banha (lard). And as is often the case at such gatherings, there was plenty of food and drink to go around, including the local firewater medronho! On one occasion, Kay declined a particularly messy job involving the making of chouriço, but, instead, offered to do the washing up. The meal was for over 20 people, so she enlisted Pete’s help, which caused much amusement among the locals, seeing a man washing up.
They lived well, experiencing the old way of life, integrating with the locals and learning Portuguese (you had to). Over the years, they built a network of friends from many different nationalities, many of whom are still living in the Algarve today.
After Portugal joined the EU in 1986 and into the 1990s, infrastructure improved, tourism grew, and more people arrived to live permanently. This meant plenty of work for Pete, a painter and decorator, and for Kay, who worked in sales for the Pestana Group Hotels and the Alto Golf and Country Club in Alvor.
As they moved into retirement, they began travelling again in a camper van, always returning to their house in the hills, until Pete fell ill in 2017. Pete passed away in 2019 and is greatly missed, and Kay remains in the house they built together 45 years ago, and at 78 years young, is still happy to call the Algarve home.
