You’d be amazed just how much is still out there, unknown or forgotten. I’ve got around a fair bit over the years, and I’ve seen some incredible things that exist on no map, no online resource, in some cases not even in the minds of locals. I’m currently living in northern Portugal, which, as part of Western Europe, you’d think would be pretty well explored - but no. The local medieval castle, which is shockingly obvious sat atop a volcanic plug, was not recognised or documented until 1979 - and only in the 1990s did someone realise that this place was that place referred to in various historical documents. The locals knew about it, of course, but it was unremarkable to them. When we moved here, we wanted an old building to restore, somewhere surrounded by nature. We talked to realtors, to locals, young and old, nobody knew of such a place. I pored over satellite imagery, chose some spots to go for a ramble. Discovered a medieval watermill - a series of them, in fact. Talked to locals again, to the council -
nobody had a clue they existed, and the land was public land - and they agreed to sell me one of them. Since we started work we’ve had a little trickle of people wandering down to say hello, and unanimously they’ve all lived there all of their lives, and they’re all agog when they see that this place exists. Exploring the land around the mill has been a blast - mines, from prehistoric to medieval, various ruins, water management channels, terraces, roads, all sorts - and nobody knew any of it was there - and the wildlife is like living in a zoo. Tortoises, snakes, foxes, deer, big damn lizards, eagles, you name it - and every time I wander up a random track I find something new, even if I’ve walked that way before.
There’s a huge amount around, everywhere, to explore - you just have to go where people aren’t, and observe.
The region is Tras Os Montes (“Beyond the Mountains”), and is a rural backwater - mountainous terrain, and going 10km as the crow flies by paved road is 40km. Most of the roads here are unpaved trackway.
The nearest paved road is about 5km by track from the mill - the bottom km was impassible when we found the place, but nothing a day with a bulldozer and a chainsaw couldn’t fix - it looked like about 60 years of growth. The track down the valley is steep and winding, and looks like it goes nowhere. Despite being at the bottom of a deep, steep valley, we get an almost full day of light, as the mill is on the north bank of a large inverted U bend in the river - the sun rises over the valley to our left, grazes the hills to the south, and sets over the valley to the right. Someone in the 1300s really thought about where to put the structure, as 50m either way along the bank gets shaded way more.
Right now we’re having to walk in and out, as we had prodigious rain in December, which both highlighted our flood risk (overtopped the roof!) and made a steep, poorly drained section of the road collapse - I’ve spent the past week teaching myself how to make a pitched stone road - nice Neolithic technique, and means all the materials I need are within spitting distance of the road - rock, gravel.
The next mill, which is about 1.5km downstream of us, has no road or track, just a steep path.
I am still scratching my head over how they built them - the lower courses of stones in the walls must weigh five tonnes apiece - huge boulders, moved purely with human and animal power. After seeing the river go crazy last month, I understand why - the force was sufficient to uproot large trees, to wash away the car, to completely scout the earth to bare rock - but the mill couldn’t have cared less. It’s good timing, insofar as we hadn’t done too much work yet, and now we know we need to ensure everything structural in there can deal with immersion, and everything else needs to be portable. Constraint, sure, but an interesting one.
While shovelling muck there yesterday (temporarily renting a house after being flooded out) I heard a loud plop over the roar of the weir - and saw two otters hunting crayfish in the mill pond - I could see them flipping rocks on the bottom and grabbing them, as the flood has washed away sediments and organics, leaving the water crystal clear. This is the stuff that makes me persevere!
Yes - it’s brilliant, but it’s not for the faint of heart. We started with walls, threw a roof on in a few weeks this summer - only needs to last a few seasons as we want to extend upwards slightly. our water is coming from a spring about 300m away, 60m vertically up - gravity feeds through filters into a tank, going to do reverse osmosis this year so we can drink it - just cooking and washing right now. Power is currently a solar array, and I intend to add hydro and possibly wind to the mix - hydro is going to be tricky, as the river is ridiculously variable, as are the streams nearby.
It has been an intense few months, just getting the place habitable - and when winter arrived life turned into a cycle of gathering firewood and plugging holes in masonry with rags - and then the whole place flooded in December, so the last six weeks have been muck-shovelling, hosing, repairing and reclaiming chattels which got flooded - we moved everything up to a shed with its floor level 5m vertically above the mill’s floor, which is 4m above the normal river level - still flooded - almost a 10m surge! Thankfully, it was only 75cm deep in there, and stopped 5cm short of trashing the solar batteries, inverter, etc., but got all the power tools and electronics (pcs, tv, NAS, routers, etc.) - which miraculously all still work after a wash and dry, barring CMOS batteries. Worst flood in centuries, apparently. We waded out in the darkness, in torrential rain, in thigh deep swirling muddy water, as the river had already burst its bank onto our track, the cats screaming bloody murder in their bag, and walked the 5km up to the car that I’d had the foresight to park up by the paved road... had nightmares for weeks - not something I care to ever repeat. Good we did evac, even if late, or we’d have probably ended up hypothermic and/or drowned.
Anyway. Ultimately, we want to use technology and automation to live off grid without reverting to medieval peasants - and the last four months have underscored that necessity, as I don’t think I can sustain this level of physical activity indefinitely. Today, after my conference calls, I’m heading back down there to keep on rebuilding the road, in the bloody freezing rain - but I have to get it done, as it’s about to be a blocker on getting anything else done. I comfort myself with the probable lie that I’ll be lying in a hammock listening to the birds and the river in a few months, and this will all be a distant memory!
The pros definitely outweigh the cons. We’ve met one other guy in this area who is doing the whole off grid thing - and he’s been doing it for years, and it’s still an incessant struggle - from components of his solar system failing (Chinese crud. Sorted him out with victron gear), to a donkey getting in and eating his crops, to his water ending up poisonous (Christmas vomit buddies), to his road also washing away - but he also wouldn’t trade it for the world - it’s the feeling of freedom and agency that is the attraction - nobody is doing these things to you - either it’s your own mistake, from which to learn, or just nature being a harsh mistress. Also, it’s really goddamned nice to just walk out of the front door in the morning, straight into wilderness. I start each day at home sitting on a rock with a coffee, just observing. Even with the stressors, I’m happier than I ever was behind a desk.
I see, your story matches those that I've read online. I'm in a very stressful job field and if I can't make it till pension I'm considering doing the same. Thanks a lot!
That's very interesting, thank you for sharing that story, makes me feel that information about the world is still young and there is yet things we have discovered. Thank you!
I have a similar experience, in Central Portugal: we found an undiscovered/undocumented site with neolithic ruins. Nothing major or too well-conserved, but still, it's quite stunning to realise that trekking in the summer in the woods almost in your backyard, and less than 10km from a city of 100,000, you can find such a thing :)
Not yet - we’ve only been here about four months, and we’re still discovering stuff all the time. I am considering doing an archaeology summer camp this or next year, however, and am chatting to a lecturer friend about the prospect. It’s a fascinating site - there are traces of a ford, which is interesting, as the bridge (3km downstream) was built in the 1200s, and presumably replaced the ford. I think the majority of what we’re seeing is ~1200 - ~1880s, but there is a cave way up a hillside that I went for a ferret down that was suspiciously man-sized, and had an antler poking out through the mud on the floor, at which point I decided to leave it be until someone who knows more than me looks at it - as I suspect it was an antler pick, which would place the mine in the Neolithic at latest.
There were also Romans in this neck of the woods, but I’ve seen nothing that has said Roman to me yet. Either way, the site has evidently seen quite a bit of activity over the ages, only falling into disuse in the early 20th century - I found a taxation tag embedded in a gnarly old olive tree that identified it as being planted in 1914, and it looked like it hadn’t been pruned ever, meaning someone probably planted it and then got the Spanish flu.
There’s a huge amount around, everywhere, to explore - you just have to go where people aren’t, and observe.