WOULD YOU CLIMB THIS MEDIEVAL TOWER? EXPLORING & CLIMBING PORTUGALS TALLEST CASTLE TOWER

Описание: Hi there! I am Joseph.
I have been an immigrant, or expat, living in central Portugal along with my beautiful girlfriend Mariana for six years now.

Together Mariana, my father Clinton and myself, would like to show you a bit of the daily goings on around our Portuguese farm / homestead / smallholding and all of the work we are doing whilst renovating, starting building projects, working with our livestock, DIY and trying to grow our little families own food!

In this episode we welcome you to join us in early winter time as we visit and give you a virtual tour of one of central Portugal's historic, fairy tale, rural castle mountain towns. Today we visit the town of Sabugal in central Portugal.

I begin by introducing myself, standing by the castle wall with Portugals largest castle tower right behind me, I explain it has been six years since I made a trip to Sabugal so today I was rather excited to show you all and see the castle again for myself.

First things first we walk through the large wooden castle gates, which lead us to the keep of the stronghold. It is here where the villagers would have held markets and exchanged wares back in the year 1190 when the castle village was first founded and commissioned by King Afonso the 9th onwards through to maybe the 18th century.

We took a look around the keep and walked up the granite steps leading to the top of the castle wall. A daring feat for anyone not so fond of heights! Upon the wall we walked right round, checking the towers as we go.

Once we got right round the wall we ended up at the Torre de Menagem, the largest castle tower in all of Portugal. We walked inside and I stood in awe looking up at all the marvellous architectural marvels. I decided to try and make my way up to see how high I could go, low and behold I could go right up to the top. Which was really rather amazing to say the least.

Shortly afterwards I took a slow meander to the main castle gate and portcullis. We walked up the steps and explored inside the 13th century castle, which was very well preserved indeed! I also explained a little about the fortifications and medieval defences of the castle, the machicolations, arrow slits, layout of the castle, treason door to name a few.

Next we made our way down from the castle and walked through to the nativity set the castle had set up for Christmas time. It is apparently the largest natural nativity set in the world. It was a beautiful sight indeed and I had good fun walking around and seeing all the little farmer models tending to their crops.

Straight afterwards I left the castle and made my way to the museum, which I was honoured to be given a private viewing of, cameras are not normally allowed inside and I was very privileged to be able to show you all some of the fascinating artefacts they hold here, everything is from the village itself, with the oldest finds dating back 5,000 years ago.

Once we had headed back to our farm I realised lunchtime was upon us, so I set to the kitchen to make a hearty sausage casserole, a nice warming stew that is my go to recipe whenever I feel a bite of chill in my fingertips or toes. The weather has now dropped to 3C at night (which is almost as cold as it gets in our region). So a warming winter meal was definitely on the cards.

Finally I made my way out onto the farm with the dogs, sat with them for a while before they ran off chasing a cat or something. I stayed behind however to bid you all a wonderful week and a very, merry run up to Christmas. Thank you all for watching, I wish you all well and I look forward to seeing you next week, where I will show you all a sneak peek at how our family and farm does Christmas.

See our journey to self sufficiency / permaculture / organic farming as expats living in Portugal, trying to produce as much of our own food planting vegetables, growing fruit trees as well as looking after all our animals, such as our chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks, quail, rabbits and sheep - Shortly pigs too!

Hobby farming in Fundão
Growing vegetables, raising meat and foraging on our cherry farm in Portugal’s Beira baixa.

Follow us on Instagram @farmerforfun

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