The new season of Threshold entitled Hark, an award-winning podcast concentrating on environmental journalism, starts with Amy Martin asking listeners to hit the pause button and listen to all the sounds they can hear. Perhaps do the same as what she suggests, and close your eyes for a moment to listen to what you can […]
“Do I have a single identity – based on nationality, ethnicity, religion, class, gender or geography? Or am I essentially a mixture of multiple belongings, cultural allegiances and diverse inheritances, backgrounds and trajectories?”– Elif Shafak In her book How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division, Elif Shafak urges the reader to ask the […]
“We are all driven to belong. To be part of the tribe, but not everybody fits in the same way. We want a life rich with purpose and meaning. That too is in our DNA, but that meaning can’t be prescribed. It must be sought, and found, and sometimes wrestled with, and fought for.”– Aaron […]
What I would consider one of the most beautiful gardens in Portugal can be found in one of the most untouristy places in the country. Built by the Bishop of Guarda, João de Mendonça around 1720, the Episcopal Palace Garden or Jardim do Paço Episcopal in Castelo Branco, was part of a large agricultural complex […]
“Our species, whose origin stories lie in lost Arcadias, has always sought to re-create paradise on Earth . . . many of us have forgotten that these Edens didn’t just happen: they are the product of millennia of care and toil. If we really value them, the responsibility to preserve them falls on us.” – […]
Where we live, where we want to live, where we grew up, where we went to school or fell in love for the first time – these places shape us. The places we come from, escape from, love, loathe, long for, go searching for, unexpectedly end up: they define our lives. Place matters, and not […]
“Change is slow and gradual. It requires hard work, a bit of luck, a fair amount of self-sacrifice, a lot of patience.” – Robert Greene April has been a whirl of activity and colour. The landscape is lush and vibrant with the iridescent green of spring, interspersed with an array of colourful flowers and grass […]
The medicinal waters of Termas do Cró, located 15km north of Sabugal in Central Portugal, in all likelihood have been used for their therapeutic properties in Roman times, but, although some ceramics and coins have been found in the vicinity, there is no concrete evidence of it. The oldest reference dates from as recent as […]
“Every food has an inspiring birthplace and holds flavors directly connected to the places and people that make them.”– Simran Sethi Spring on the quinta is a tumultuous explosion of colour – white, yellow, and purple vie for attention, while the calls of the cuckoo bird punctuate a collective increase in the birdsong that fills […]
“Others can stop you temporarily – you are the only one who can do it permanently.”– Zig Ziglar During the last couple of months Michael and I have seriously questioned the sanity of the choices we´ve made in recent years. Our struggles with the bureaucratic system, and finding people who work to our standards in […]
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