Moving into the wild...

In March 2017 we arrived here, the place we now call home, the land we have tended lovingly with our hands for the past 6 years. Wild & mysterious she is, full of ancient olive trees, broom & brush, granite rocks the size of cars, oaks as old as time & a landscape beyond our borders that looks like an oil painting, changing every season.

We live at the foot of a small mountain called Monsanto that is home to around 90 people, probably less now, this is seriously the most rural area I have ever lived. If you have not heard of it then I guess you don’t watch Game of Thrones. The new series House of Dragon was filmed here a few years ago & yes… I got to take part as an extra. Hello Jaymie of the house Targaeryan. A highlight of my time here honestly, standing in the freezing cold winds on top of the castle for 3 days in November in an outfit I wanted to keep & wear every day for the rest of my time.

( thank you to Maxim, the actor who took this photo, I was not allowed my phone on set & had to sign an NDA)

But this remote village is magical beyond belief regardless of being cast as the dragons nest, on top sits a castle built over 900 years ago with strong connections to the Knights Templar, archaeologists have found evidence of Roman, Visigoth ( Carruthers of Gutland)  and Arabian occupations here. The streets are lined with tiny homes built into balancing granite boulders, truly a place stuck in time. It is quite hard to find information online abut this beautiful village & its traditions so we have to learn stories from the locals. They tell us that the well at the top reaches all the way to the base of the mountain & connects to other sites via tunnels, which sounds way too cool to be true, but it probably is.

I recommend reading the book First Templar Nation: How Eleven Knights Created a New Country and a Refuge for the Grail by Freddy Silva, a Portuguese author. A fascinating look at how Portugal came to be & it gives Monsanto a mention, he can explain it much better than I.

“Conventional history claims that nine men formed a brotherhood called the Knights Templar in Jerusalem in 1118 to provide protection for pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. Overturning this long-established historical narrative, Freddy Silva shows that the Order of the Temple existed a decade earlier on the opposite side of Europe, that the protection of pilgrims was entrusted to a seperate organization, and that, in league with the Cistercian monks and the equally mysterious Order of Sion, the Templars executed one of history's most daring and covert plans: the creation of Europe's first nation-state, Portugal, with one of their own as king.”

The first time we walked through this village we were in awe, six years later it still blows my mind. More about that to come.