Why Settle For A Conservatory?

Why settle for a conservatory?

We were both straddling 50. One of us had passed that significant mark and I was fast approaching it. So we were not totally surprised by our eldest son’s reaction when we told him that we had decided to pack in our careers and corresponding well paid jobs, sell our lovely converted farmhouse and move with his two teenage brothers to begin a new life on the Algarve. His response was priceless and hit a tender spot - ´ why can’t you be like all my friend’s parents, and build a conservatory?’

At the time, Ireland was in the luxurious grip of the Celtic Tiger and people our age, enjoying a financial surplus we had never dreamed of ten years earlier, were buying, building and spending with a new vigour. And everywhere you looked, middle aged couples like us, with good jobs and established homes were building luxurious conservatories and furnishing them to abandon.

We decided against the conservatory and put all the proceeds from the sale of the house into an old abandoned farmhouse set in the heart of rural Algarve. The house itself was stripped to its underwear, with only the bare walls, and not all of them, left standing. A new roof, all new windows and doors, the conversion of animal sheds in living quarters, and the addition of a few new walls, all provided their own challenges. We battled to relearn the little Portuguese we once knew, battled to stay on top of the mounds of paperwork and coils of bureaucracy that threatened to suffocate us. There were days when a clean, shiny conservatory seemed very appealing. Outside, we had 16 acres of orange groves to tackle. Years of neglect meant that even accessing the orchard was a hazard and having never grown anything more than a head of lettuce and the odd cabbage in our Irish vegetable plot, we were definitely on new ground.

But whatever challenges we were taking on, I will never cease to be amazed and thrilled by the courage and enthusiasm of our two sons, who at fifteen and seventeen years of age, decided against the nearby international school when all the teaching was done in English, and enrolled in the local Portuguese school. Learning Portuguese from scratch, and becoming familiar with an educational system that was totally different from anything they experience before, were only some of the hurdles facing them. There were benefits too of course, long sunny lunch hours; lazy sessions in the café when classes were inexplicably cancelled and beautiful Portuguese girls. Being two of the few blue eyed pupils in the school, they soon learned to use this to their advantage and one was even voted ‘best eyes’ by the dinner ladies!

Conservatories are great if that is what you want. But I did not want to spend the rest of my days sitting comfortably in mine, but bored, thinking of all the things I could have done if only I had taken the risk. Taking risks does get harder as you get older. You have all the experience of your previous mistakes lining up to yell at you and pointing out you how much can go wrong. You are surrounded by people who like to keep things just as they are, work colleagues, neighbours, friends and even family members who may be affected by the changes you are thinking of making. And you are living in a society which tells you that at fifty you should only be thinking about health insurance, pensions and conservatories.

Today we have an amazing six bed roomed guesthouse on the Algarve as well as our own stunning living quarters. A look at our website shows the transformation that has taken place on the grounds, with beautiful gardens, a large floodlit swimming pool, and lots of specially developed corners just for relaxation and enjoying the abundance of nature in this wonderful part of the world. A look at our visitors book reminds us that we have succeeded in creating what we intended –a haven for relaxation where busy people, like we once were, can come and step back, relax, enjoy and appreciate the good things that are there for our enjoyment.

I have nothing against conservatories, they are great when you really want one, but at that point in our lives, it was not the thing for us. At the time, and in the society we were living in, there were actually quite a lot of pressures to go for the conservatory option. But we didn’t, and the result had been enriching not only for us and our two youngest sons but also our oldest son, who had tried out a few dreams of his own.

So what about you? Are you being pushed into building a conservatory when there is a bigger, more exciting project waiting to be birthed?