Journal & Videos, A Terra Liberty

Living in Central Portugal: Finding a Home in the Burned Hills

@aterraliberty · Central Portugal

House Hunting In Rural Portugal, And What Life Here Actually Costs

@aterraliberty · Central Portugal

Living in Portugal: The Reality of Daily Life in Coimbra.

@aterraliberty · Central Portugal

Living In Portugal - What Village Houses Around Coimbra Actually Cost 2026.

@aterraliberty · Central Portugal

Our Village Fed Us Sardines. This Is What Portugal Actually Looks Like

@aterraliberty · Central Portugal

We Moved to Portugal With Kids - Month Four (A Birthday, the Atlantic & Our First Land)

@aterraliberty · Central Portugal

We Live an Hour From Costa Nova, Portugal, And This Is What We Found

@aterraliberty · Central Portugal

Our House in Portugal Finally Feels Like Home, The Second Shipment Arrived

@aterraliberty · Central Portugal

We Moved to Coimbra, Portugal. Our First Month (The Real Version)

@aterraliberty · Central Portugal

From Motorhome Life to Scotland to Portugal. The Full Story

@aterraliberty · Central Portugal

See all videos on YouTube. New content every week, slow mornings, market days, local recipes, and honest reflections on life in Portugal.

View Channel →

Written Posts

Portugal Life

The EU Registration Certificate: Five Year vs Six Month, and Why It Matters for Article 15

If you are joining an EU citizen spouse in Portugal under Article 15, almost everything rests on one document being right before you start. The EU citizen's registration certificate. I have been on both sides of this. I went through Article 15 as the non EU spouse when we first came in 2022, and I am now an EU citizen myself. This is the honest version of how the process actually fits together, what to check at each step, and the mistake we made that cost us months, so that you do not make the same one.

September 20267 min read

Portugal Life

Moving to Portugal With Young Children: The Honest Version 2026

For us, yes, but not for the reasons the guides give, and not without some hard mornings. If you are weighing this move with small children, here is the honest version. What has been genuinely good, what has been harder than anyone told us, and one evening in a potato field that showed me what I had actually been looking for.

September 20264 min read

Portugal Life

The Free State Portuguese Course in Portugal (PLA) 2026 Guide

Portugal runs free state Portuguese courses (PLA) for anyone over 16. They cost nothing and certify you to the level accepted for residency and citizenship.

September 20265 min read

Portugal Life

The 50-Metre Fire Clearing Rule in Portugal (Renters Too) 2026

If there is forest near your Portuguese home, you must clear a 50-metre band every year, and the law applies to tenants, not just owners. Here is what it means.

September 20265 min read

Portugal Life

Is Creche Free in Portugal? Yes - Here's How (2026)

Creche in Portugal can be completely free under the Creche Feliz programme, with no income test. Here is who qualifies, how to apply, and the catch nobody mentions.

September 20265 min read

Portugal Life

The Hardest Week Was the One With Nothing In It

I had assumed the end of the arranging would arrive as relief. It arrived as something else entirely, at the exact moment everything was finally going well, and nobody had warned me it was coming.

August 20265 min read

Portugal Life

Nobody Tells You That You Are Moving Somewhere Cold

We came into Portugal in February and the cold came out of the house to meet us at the door. It took me weeks to understand that this was not bad luck, and longer to understand what else I had never thought to ask.

August 20265 min read

Portugal Life

What Actually Goes Wrong When You Move Abroad

Ours went wrong in three places, and none of them were the parts we had worried about. They were the arrangements we made calmly, months in advance, and then stopped thinking about because they felt settled.

August 20266 min read

Portugal Life

The Years Before the Move That Nobody Sees You Doing

People imagine this stage as removal quotes and a date on the calendar. That part is real, and it turned out to be the easy half. The work that actually decided whether we would still be here happened years earlier, in an ordinary week, and there was nothing to show anybody while it was going on.

July 20266 min read

Portugal Life

Our First Santos Populares: A Sardines Festival in a Central Portuguese Village

We walked to the village hall on the evening of the sardines festival. It was a short walk, the kind you make in a village like ours, where the houses are close together and the lanes are narrow and you do not need a car for anything that matters.

June 20265 min read

Portugal Life

Raising Young Children in Central Portugal: Four Months After Moving From Scotland

Four months after we left Scotland for central Portugal with two young children, this is what has changed in them, in us, and in the texture of an ordinary week.

June 20269 min read

Portugal Life

The Test Is What You Carry Home

Portugal was a blind country to us. We had never been, we knew almost nothing, and then one of us went alone and came back certain. What I understand now is that the country is not the thing that tells you. What tells you is what happens in the weeks after you leave it.

June 20265 min read

Portugal Life

The Gas Bottle, and What It Taught Me About Time in Central Portugal

The man arrived in the late afternoon. He was dressed in the simple working clothes of someone who has done this same job for a long time, and he was helpful in the unhurried way that I have come to recognise here, in this part of central Portugal where not everyone speaks English the way they do in Algarve or Lisbon or Porto. We had asked him to come. The bottle we use for cooking, the large one that lasts us roughly three months, was almost finished, and I had wanted to be sure.

May 20265 min read