The family behind Ar e Mar in Aljezur.

We came for a winter. Aljezur is home now.

Before Aljezur there were eight years in Thailand. Two daughters were born in that time, and at some point we started looking for a place where they could grow up outdoors, near water, in a village where people know each other rather than a resort where nobody does.

We found it on Cabeça, the hill beside the castle: 85 m² of ruin with a view over the whole valley. It took a year. We live in it now. The girls go to the local school and speak better Portuguese than we do.

Both of us surf, Sabrina as much as Andreas. We started here, on this coast, and it changed how we read a day: which way the wind has gone, what the swell is doing, whether it is a morning for the water or the trail. That connection to the Atlantic is not a line for a website. It is the reason we stayed.

Three years ago we bought a second old house nearby and rebuilt it from the ground up with neighbours and friends: clay plaster, exposed schist, a pellet stove, German bathrooms. Two homes came out of it. In November we start on the third and last house.

Three houses, five homes, and our own when we are away. That is the ceiling and we mean it. Bigger than that and we would have to hire strangers to run it, and then you would be dealing with a company instead of with us.

Neighbours from up the road help us keep the buildings in order, and Cláudia cleans them. They earn a proper wage for it, and it shows in every review we get about how cared-for the place is.

What that means for you is simple. There is no reception and no script. If the water heater plays up, if you cannot find the bins, if you want to know where to eat on a Monday when half the town is shut, you write and one of us writes back. When something goes wrong we say so and we fix it, usually the same day. We would rather hear about it while you are here than read about it afterwards.