Home and Horse Options in Portugal

 

The trip is over and, for the most part, we met our primary objectives of finding areas where we might want to live and places where we could keep our horses and places where we could ride. So could we make the move and be satisfied and happy with our choices? Let's go over some details before answering.

What sort of housing?

The housing in the urban centers is either high rise condos and apartments (sometimes in soul crushing massive public housing blocks), smaller condo buildings, duplexes (what we call town homes or terraced houses in the US) and individual houses (not common, and sometimes two housing units shared a single shared wall). We found most of the condos to be unappealing. Even in the buildings we liked we could only imagine living on the top floor to avoid the inevitable sound of stomping feet overhead. This rather quickly focused our searches for duplexes and houses.

But even with these options we found that some neighborhoods were just too densely packed with too little open space or vegetation around them.

And so the sorts of places we did not like tended to look like the following.

And the sorts of places we liked usually looked like the ones below.

Where to live?

Porto

We already knew we liked visiting Porto, and so it was our first stop on the trip and where we stayed the longest and did the most exploring. We identified three "neighborhoods" we really liked: Foz do Douro, Sampaio (Vila Nova de Gaia), and the northern tip of Matosinhos. All three areas were near marinas with sailing clubs, which was a nice coincidence. The first two areas are serviced by an excellent bus system (and a tram for Foz do Douro) and the metro for the Matosinhos.

Braga

Braga was new to us and we spent a full four days wandering the streets and avenues looking for nice neighborhoods, but we limited our search to the old city center (bounded by the A11 and the N101 and N103). We particularly liked  the southwestern and northwestern corners of the city from which the rest of Braga's center is easily accessible on foot. Braga is served by a good bus system and a train for travel to Porto (or elsewhere).

Vila do Conde

We spent two half days walking through Vila do Conde (VdC), and joined a regular expat meetup in the market on one of those days. This is also where a FaceBook friend, Beverley, met us and drove us around the area and out to see the nearby horse facility where she boards her horse. While less green than our favorite areas in Porto and Braga, we did find the stretch from Caxinas north to the southern edge of Povoa de Varzim to be appealing. There is a tiny marina in VdC and a much larger one in Povoa, but neither had a sailing club (that I could find). VdC and Povoa are both served by the Porto metro, which is a major advantage.

Conclusions

We felt we could be happy living in any of our chosen locations, although the places nearer to Porto and all of its big city amenities, basically everywhere except for Braga, make them more appealing. If there were no other considerations we would pick whichever one of them in which we could first find available suitable housing.

Horses

Boarding

Finding a place to keep our horses has been stressful because most stables in Portugal keep their horses inside their stalls except when they are ridden or otherwise worked. Some barns have stalls that are only 3x3 meters, which is noticeably smaller than our 12x12 foot stalls. We were fortunate in finding three facilities that boarded horses and offered turnout: one near Vila do Conde, one near Braga (close to Barcelos) and one inside Peneda-Gerês National Park.

All three were nice and had owners that generously showed us around and talked about horse care in Portugal. Of these barns the one near Barcelos provided the daily care that most closely matched what we do at our own place: horses are fed in the morning, get turned out to the pasture each day for the entire day (Topaz and Taylor would go out together), fed lunch in the pasture, and at the end of the day are brought back into their stalls and fed a third time. The stalls themselves are actually larger than ours at home.

The one near Vila do Conde and the one near Barcelos are both within reasonable driving distances from any of our chosen places to live, which is important because Elayne wants to go work with or ride the horses at least three or four times a week.

The one in Gerês has access to miles and miles of riding trails, but it is a long drive from the Porto based locations, and nearly 45 minutes from Braga. They also only have pasture turnout in the summer months (because horses apparently melt in the rain?).

Riding

Ah, there's the rub. Trail riding the way we do it at home does not seem to be a thing in Portugal. For us a ten mile ride is barely long enough to justify going out. We combine walking with a lot of trotting and some cantering to cover a lot of ground over the course of several hours to most of the day and we typically target fifteen to twenty five miles for a single ride. For the two most convenient barns there are only very short and very limited trails nearby.

Transporting horses in Portugal means either a trailer and tow vehicle, which requires a special classification of driver's license, which requires a test (in Portuguese), or a small enough transport truck  to avoid needing the license. The incredibly narrow and twisty roads and scarcity of parking means that we will not be over enthusiastic to transport horses to trail heads on any sort of regular basis.

 

 Conclusion

The problem with inadequate trails is large enough to completely derail our relocation plans, but Elayne came up with a potential solution, and while it is not optimal, it might be acceptable.

During the winter months we board the horses near Barcelos and where Elayne can easily work with them in the indoor arenas or we can go for short rides on the available trails. In the summer months we move the horses to Gerês and make the longer drive less often, but possibly stay for multiple days and do more riding. Come winter we transport them back to Barcelos. We can even hire someone to do the transportation such that we do not need to worry about the stressful drive in a large vehicle or obtaining the required license.

This plan makes Braga the most practical city in which to live, and so it is fortunate we feel like we would be happy there.

Next Time

What does all of the above mean? What is next? What steps would we follow for a move? And will a life in Portugal actually be worth the expense and effort and emotional drain to move us and our horses across a continent and an ocean?

Postscript: some have read the above entry as meaning we have already decided upon the move, when we have in fact not. While Elayne's solution is better than nothing, it is still not particularly compelling. Yes, it could work. But is that going to provide enough riding to make this incredibly stressful, time consuming and expensive move worth it? We do not yet know. We are still evaluating the move and are trying to weigh all of the advantages versus disadvantages. My next blog entry will address this.