How it all began...
Ever since I was a child I've dreamed of doing two things in life: travelling on horseback and living in the middle of nowhere growing my own food and being as self-sufficient as possible.
As I grew older, instead of fading away like many other of my childish ideas, these two only grew stronger, more deep-rooted and I became more determined than ever to make these dreams a reality.
I acquired horses in my teens with the intention of using them for travel and, upon finishing school, I moved to rural Cornwall where I ended up living in a caravan in a field for six years. I made several (failed) attempts over the years to start a vegetable garden and travel on horseback but each time I found that the reality was so much harder than my imaginings. It wasn't until my mid-twenties that I began successfully travelling on horseback.
In 2016 I rode 100 miles from my home near Bodmin Moor to Land's End, then later the same year I travelled 300 miles around the Southwest of England with two of my horses. In 2017, I travelled 1000 miles alone (save for my horse, Taliesin and wolfdog, Spirit) from Durness in the northwest of Scotland back to Cornwall. Then in 2018 rode another 1000 miles from Cornwall to Wales and all across Ireland with my Romanian boyfriend, Vlad. The following year we rode from Cornwall to Winchcombe and then along the length of the Ridgeway to launch my first book about the Scotland to Cornwall journey.
The next big adventure was meant to be an epic 3,000 mile ride across Europe from Portugal to Romania in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic and closed borders left us stranded in Portugal. When an opportunity arose to take on a 3 hectare quinta near Fornos de Algodres for a few months we leapt at the chance and it was here that I finally managed to successfully start a garden.
The following year more lockdowns and closed borders meant that once again we couldn't set off for Romania. By now our money was running out and my wolfdog, Spirit, was getting too old and stiff to make the 3000 mile trek across Europe. And something else had happened, too. Our plan when we reached Romania had been to buy land, settle down and have a go at living more self-sufficiently. But during our time in central Portugal we'd found a lovely, supportive community of people, living off grid, growing food, all with similar visions and aspirations towards a better way of living on this beautiful planet. Everything we'd hoped to find in Romania was already here. Then a beautiful half hectare piece of land came up for sale at 3,000 euros. It had terraces with olive trees, some apples, pears, hazel nuts and figs and grapes, a well, a water mine, and an area of pine forest. I bought the land and Vlad bought the two adjoining terraces. We moved on in our horse lorry on the 1st of May, 2021 and so began our journey into off-grid, self-sufficient living.