Thanks, all, really informative and some food for thought. Our neighbours in Portugal use the "hopper" to and from the airport to Carvoeiro. They pick up and drop off as near as poss to where you want to be apparently and it's very cheap. Can't remember how much but nothing like 40 euros. I had alre...

Thanks very much - that's really helpful.

We retired earlier this year and the plan is to come out to our holiday home for 3 x 6 week periods. Car hire in March was £260, in June we needed to bring some stuff over so came by ferry in our own car. We've just hired for 6 weeks September/Oct and they are charging £600. We are now wondering whe...

I'm just a very big kid and I love it!!

Yes this is all VERY disappointing and may also affect rentals - people may have to review their flexibility over changeover days. As for us - Bristol no long fly every day and Cardiff, which was never very good (BMI BABY) is even worse and much more expensive. We've always come over for a long week...

You can definitely buy in £ sterling - we bought 4 years ago and pegged the price with the UK seller in sterling so we all knew where we were. Our lawyer in Carvoeiro had both sterling and euro bank accounts to facilitate such transactions.

Depends which Golfemar you mean - Clube or Vila? They are very different. We have a property on Vila Golfemar which we bought through VDM just over 2 years ago and we are very happy with it. Monica is very good, as is the VDM proprietor, Keith Simms. He seems very straightforward.

Other half reckoned the cost of running the dehumidifier shouldn't be more than to run a fridge as there's no heating involved with it. Time will tell! We bought a Rowenta from Makro and we've raised it up so as to allow us to run a pipe into the bath - has worked fine so far. It has a good display ...

Just reporting in to say that having had the dehumidifier constantly draining into the bath from when we left at the end of Oct to when we returned for a long weekend at the beginning of Feb - made an ENORMOUS difference on the year before. Everything felt dry and there wasn't a musty smell. Left it...

Back in Blighty now. In fact didn't need to try out your suggestion Bazza - we were able to raise the machine in such a way as to get a pipe from it to the bath and we've left it on permanently - seems ok. Thanks for hte idea though.

Bazza, the idea about the chrome plate sounds brilliant - we'll look into that next week. THANKS!!

We bought a Rowenta one from Makro which is very easy to use - it has an LED display which is intuitive whether you are English or Portuguese - important to us, as the maids on our management company don't speak English! The hose sounds like a good idea till we realised that unless your dehumidifier...

bmi have been doing this for ages!

Is there any chance you could raise the money on your existing home? We did that to buy our property - obviously it means you put your home at risk if you can't afford the mortgage but it may be a thought.

Thank you, Misty.