Many people have asked why the Silver Coast and not the Algarve. I'm afraid the honest answer does the Algarve no favours, so I will be diplomatic. To put it simply (bluntly?) we did not want the version of Portugal that has had the frayed edges ironed out for people who never venture beyond the resort.
Our brief was no golf, no gated developments, no bars showing Premier League football to rooms full of English voices. And no shirtless revellers decorating the streets with empty bottles and (again, diplomacy) the evidence of their partying. We wanted a small village. Somewhere with one bar that opens and closes when the owner feels like it, and does not offer a laminated menu in four languages.
We wanted to be welcomed as immigrants, not expats. I have never liked the word. A British woman in Portugal is an expat; a Portuguese woman in Britain is an immigrant. Same act, different word, and we all know how and why the names are applied. I associate the word 'expat' with privileged white bankers swanning around the globe for a couple of years, never quite settling. We left England. We live in Portugal now. Forever. That makes us immigrants. I would rather be an immigrant who gets tripped up on language and customs in a local community than an 'expat' who has arrived in a place where it doesn't much matter.
We also wanted somewhere unlikely ever to reach forty degrees in the summer. And we were hoping for a front-row seat for the Atlantic storms, which tend to arrive suddenly and without knocking. We found exactly that in Pedra do Ouro. A small house on the front line above the Atlantic, on the edge of a cliff so high we can sit at the end of the garden and look down on the seagulls.
It sits in a village nobody seems to have heard of. The beach is deserted for much of the year, bar a few lone fishermen lost in the early morning mist. There is one local restaurant (no Michelin star). Paulo serves us sea bass straight from the ocean but his small menu is somewhat lacking when it comes to yuzu foam or a smear of pea purée, served –for reasons no-one can quite explain – on a roof tile.
We have one mini mart run by a lovely man from the Punjab and while he does not keep a ready stock of dried barberries, Rahul makes me chai from freshly ground spices and Bill gets a draught lager in a chilled glass. It's likely that kind of service is never going to be offered at my local Waitrose anytime soon.
What indeed is in a name? The Silver Coast is a gift to advertisers, estate agents and the like. The name conjures up a vision of glittering ocean, long beaches and endless sunshine. Pedra do Ouro is where we settled. Its name translates as Golden Stone. Being a little bit corny, I might say we set off in search of silver and ended up with gold. It certainly feels that way. There is nothing about it that is polished or gilded. And after a while, names stop mattering anyway. The Silver Coast is for the brochures. We haven't found the advertiser's version of Portugal. We found Portugal.