Finding a place of retreat in Portugal

We found Vale de Moses in September 2007, six months into a year’s trip round Southern Europe in a motor-home with our children Joshua and Eloise, aged ten and eight, and our legend of a golden retriever, Moses. We took a year out from work and school, to be together as a family, for a glorious adventure, for a very long dog walk and to see, perhaps, if there was a life in Europe a little more sustainable and connected to nature than the furious paced one we were living in south east London.

In September of that year, having traveled (and eaten!) extensively through France, Italy and Spain, we arrived in Portugal and found an old abandoned farm in the remote forested foothills of the Serra da Estrela mountains, nestled below the picturesque village of Amieira, with the same name as our dog, Moses. In Portuguese it means a place of many millstones, but to us it was a divine coincidence!

The day we arrived Moses our faithful furry companion, also physically found the farm. There was no one to show us the property and as we couldn’t speak Portuguese to the villagers back then, Vonetta asked Moses to show us the way. He duly sped off down the forest tracks with us on his tail, exactly to the houses we’d seen online.

You can read more about that magical day on our “Poop in Europe Tour” travel blog, named as such because the aim was for Moses to poo in as many countries as we could visit in that year off. When we reached Amieira, our search was over.

Our second blog “We Love Moses” chronicled the five years of restoration work and landscaping we did as a family, carving out a more self-sustainable way of life, until we invited our first yoga retreat guests to our forest home in 2012. Since then we’ve shared our news via our Facebook page and Insta accounts. Feel free to connect with us before you visit:
@valedemoses @andrewcampbellwinter @vonetta_winter

In 2017, five years after opening, and having received hundreds of guests from all over the planet, we were honoured to be featured by National Geographic as one of the top 5 retreats in Europe and listed by Forbes, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Yoga Journal, OmYoga Magazine and others as one of the best retreats in the world. For us and our fabulous team all the wonderful coverage has been immensely encouraging, and for our local community very special too, as Oleiros is a little off the beaten tourist track. 

“Moses had serendipitously led us to our own promised land. True story.”