A young (well moderately!) couple who have managed to conquer the Portuguese bureaucracy and build a villa, hindered by a rogue Portuguese builder who ran off with our money and helped by his replacement who was worth his weight in gold – anyway, the result is Villa Alfarroba.. Along the way we have learned a lot and made some very good business contacts and, more importantly, some very good friends.

My background is Event Management, Marketing and Design – I'm the creative 'people' person whilst Paul is the engineer. Ask him to draw an apple and he couldn't but ask him to create a set of architects plans on Auto cad – he would be in his element.

Before we moved to Portugal we gave up our daily jobs to build a bungalow for my parents. Due to illness, my father had lost both legs and he was restricted to a wheelchair so we wanted to build something that would make his life easier and be a nice place for them to live with a manageable garden for my mother. It was featured on Grand Designs* so, with the stress of the filming, my fathers' failing health and the general stress of building, we were relieved to finally move to Portugal in January 2009.

We have lived in the beautiful area of Sta Rita for nearly 4 years and just love it. We have come to know the surrounding area and are well placed to help and advise all our guests of the best places to visit, eat out or just go for a sundowner