WE LEFT THE UK TO BUY IN PORTUGAL – FOR £30,000 WE’VE GOT HALF AN ACRE OF LAND

Around half a million people left the UK to live elsewhere last year, and it’s not just retirees. A survey of more than 3,000 young people by the British Council showed that 72 per cent of 18- to 30-year-olds would consider living and working abroad, with destinations in Europe, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, and South East Asia proving popular.

Many expats are seeking a better quality of life, and cite varying factors – cold weather, high cost of living, extortionate childcare, stagnant wages, dwindling opportunity, lack of work-life balance, and even poor romantic prospects – among their motivations for leaving the UK. The i Paper’s Expat Files follows Brits who have taken the leap and settled elsewhere, detailing the ups and downs of their journey.

Kieran Jones, 29, from Carmarthenshire and his partner, Edinburgh-born Amy Gorman, 34, swapped running gyms in London for doing up a dilapidated house in the rural outskirts of Coimbra, central Portugal. Here, he explains the highs, the lows – and why they have zero regrets.

In the first two years of my relationship with Amy, we were personal trainers for the same gym groups across London, and life was very much work-oriented. We’d be out of the house by 5.30am and back home for 9pm, not really seeing each other in those working hours. We used to give ourselves Sundays to try and feel like humans and spend time together – but even that mainly consisted of cooking food to meal-prep for the week ahead.

By November 2023 we were worn down, and decided opening a gym of our own would give us autonomy to structure life in a more manageable way. We left our jobs with that aim in April 2024, but first took a few months off and spent most of that time in Europe.

At one point, we were house-sitting in Lisbon, and considered living here. Amy had always wanted to move to Lisbon, having spent time here as a child. So we started to entertain the idea. We had no ties to London and it seemed like as good a time as any to do something new.

Then, one morning, I stumbled upon a YouTube channel of a couple renovating a house in Italy. It occurred to me that this would be another way to have autonomy and creativity within our lives. Neither of us had any renovating experience – I consider myself quite handy and had some DIY experience, but nothing on this level. But it felt like a fun challenge we’d be up for.

I found 33 houses across Europe within the price range of what we’d saved for our gym deposit: £30,000. Amy looked through and we settled on Portugal.

We wanted to be somewhere in Europe with good weather, where we would have to learn another language, so Portugal still worked well. Because our finances were modest, we didn’t expect to get much. We wanted a bit of outdoor space to grow food, and enough indoor space to be able to have a gym and an office.

The place we ended up with is in rural Coimbra, central Portugal. There’s a few buildings, and half an acre of land including a small bit of forest. The main house has two bedrooms and a limited electricity supply (we don’t have a kettle as that’d likely be too powerful). The other buildings have a total of two bedrooms, a bathroom, and storage space. There was running water, which was a bonus. It needed a hell of a lot of work though, and still does a year on. When we arrived there were holes in the roof, the bathroom ceiling was lined with a green mould, most ceilings had damp patches and there were flaking walls.

It’s remote. The nearest stores are in a town a 20-minute drive away – there’s a supermarket, a gym, and a building supplies shop, which is all we really need at the moment.

We completed the sale in November 2024 and have never looked back.

It’s been exciting to learn so many new skills, and build a house and a new way of life. The renovations we have planned will probably take three to five years and things like electrical wiring aside, we plan to do it all ourselves.

We’ve mainly learned through doing, online videos, and asking locals for their advice. The comments on our YouTube channel have also provided useful tips. Doing all of this on top of learning a new language means everything here is new, every day is full of lessons – everything from going to the shop to building a roof over our heads.

We’ve had our challenges, though. Getting the roof sealed up properly before winter was difficult. We managed to get it to a position where the rain was kept out – at times, that meant just scrambling to cover it with plastic. We carried logs from eucalyptus trees we cut down in the forest for the beams and roof rafters. They’re beautiful, but they were over 200kg and took days to install, from felling them to preparing, and then actually lifting them onto the house. We didn’t have a crane, we used wood rollers and straps, scaffolding and ladders.

We have had more rain than expected, which has slowed progress a little bit. My main concern is to get the roof on the smaller building before winter sets in. We have measured a few things wrong along the way – it usually only set us back half a day or so, but undoing the work you did is quite tiring at times. Still, we wouldn’t change what we’re doing or where we are for the world.

We’re making a point of trying to integrate and learn the language. We try to speak it whenever we encounter people – at the gym, at bars, and with our neighbours and the person who delivers bread twice a week. You can look at it two ways: it makes everything more difficult because there’s a language barrier, or it makes everything more fun because every single thing you do, you get to experience differently.

Amy still goes into town to use the gym twice a week, but I haven’t been once since moving, over a year ago. I have no interest in it. Building keeps me fit enough, and I enjoy that functional element of fitness as well as it not being the main goal.

To make ends meet, most of our income still comes from the UK: Amy coaches online and I run our renovation project YouTube channel, which we have some affiliate deals for. I earn some extra money doing clearing and gardening work for people who are buying property in the area, via the estate agent we used. We make a fraction of the money we used to – not near enough to live off between us in London. But we’re so much happier.

I don’t miss a thing, really – apart from cheese bagels. (Bagels and cheddar are way more expensive in the supermarkets here, and local breads and cheese – usually soft cheeses – are about a quarter of the price, so we stick to those.) The bright lights of London were lovely, but it doesn’t compare to the peace we have here.

Our pace is different now. Life is just so slow here: we can spend an hour over coffee, sitting outside looking at the wonderful landscape. We went to Lisbon a few months back, the first time we’d left the house in weeks, and by day three, I honestly just wanted to be back in the middle of nowhere. We haven’t been out of Portugal this year – we are happy pushing on with what we are doing.

We don’t have any plans to move back to the UK. The Portuguese government is increasing how long it takes to get citizenship here now, and we will be here at least until we get it. That’s seven years or more – which doesn’t phase us, as we plan to be here indefinitely. People are friendly, we’re getting on with the language, and we actually get to spend time together. It’s helping us be more patient – the challenges of the work mean we communicate and solve problems together, and feel a sense of accomplishment. We truly have no regrets at all.

2025-12-09T06:34:06Z