Bob and Mary Choosing Sanctuary
Bob and Mary walked the Comporta coast and countryside with me for almost fifteen years, before helping me understand that the real privilege was not simply living near beautiful places, but choosing a sanctuary that could remain alive, quiet and fully itself.
Bob and Mary walked Comporta with me for almost fifteen years, and when I could not walk, they carried me.
In the early mornings at Brejos, when the frost sat on the reeds and the first light turned the tracks gold, they would stop as if the whole place had been left there overnight for their inspection. Bob steady, watchful, and faintly offended by any disturbance to the peace. Mary already considering something less diplomatic. Between them, they covered the coast from the sands of the Tróia Peninsula through Carrasqueira, Brejos, Pego and Muda as if it had all been placed there for their supervision.
They missed Melides, although in the end I suspect they chose something different from the coastline they knew by heart. A few years after they arrived, we found our way inland to the cork forest between Muda and Grândola, and if I am honest, I think that decision belonged at least as much to them as it did to me.
They needed land, life, character, and the freedom to be secure within their own environment. As it turned out, so did I.
The Coast, and the Forest
At the time, we were still living closer to the beach, in places that I loved and still do. Brejos at sunrise remains one of the great privileges of this coast. So do the rice fields before the day begins, the lagoon at Melides in still weather, and those first early hours when the birds, the insects, the reeds and the mist still belong to themselves.
But over time the coastline changed, as coastlines do. More houses. More pressure. More cement. More compact development. More of the sort of progress that rarely asks the land for its opinion.
That is not a complaint. It is simply the reality of what happens when somewhere beautiful becomes desirable.
The useful part lies in what you do with that reality.
For me, the answer was not to fight every inch of change between Tróia and Melides, because that battle is already larger than any one person. The answer was to make a deliberate choice about where to plant our roots. We left the beach and moved inland, into the deeper cork forest between Muda and Grândola, and in doing so found something the coast was gradually giving away: stillness, privacy, and a landscape that did not need improving.
Fitting Into a Place
There is a difference between owning somewhere and fitting into it.
One tends to begin with plans, drawings, boundaries and ambition. The other begins with observation. You walk it. You listen to it. You notice which parts of the ground stay damp, where the boar move, how the fog sits in the morning, when the cork is due to come off, which trees have seniority, and where the birds insist on getting there first.
You accept that nature functions rather well without your intervention, and that your role is not to dominate the setting, but to look after it properly while you are fortunate enough to live within it.
Bob and Mary understood this long before I did.
The Founders of the Sanctuary
Bob, named after Bob Marley for his soulful, heavy red eyes, was the chivalrous powerhouse of the operation. He was the protector, the one who took the brush lines seriously, especially in Muda, and who heard a distant shotgun and considered it his business.
Mary Poppins was different. Mary could fly. She had the sort of spring-loaded athleticism that made rabbits understandably nervous and left the rest of us slightly horrified, although of course it was perfectly natural to her. They had been abandoned and had learned to fend for themselves before they found us, so Mary’s airborne ambitions were not a party trick. They were survival.
Bob was a gentleman. Mary ate first. Bob protected. Mary strategised. In truth, Bob was very much the leader of himself, and Mary was very much the leader of Bob, which is probably why the arrangement worked so well.
Together they introduced me to the deeper life of the land. To the Duke of Cork, guardian of the forest, who stands a little way in and carries himself exactly as his title suggests. When last harvested in 2019, he was stripped of his dark outer armour and left glowing in that vivid orange only a cork oak can manage, as if he had suddenly remembered his youth.
And to Bo the Boar, Head of Unrequested Earthworks, who has developed a rather practical appreciation for manicured lawns on the basis that they make excellent breeding grounds for worms and insects. Bo clears excessive acorns, turns the soil, ignores planning permits, employs no engineers, and charges absolutely nothing. Every now and then the family emerge from the brush to roll in the shallow pond, which rather confirms that the place is functioning as it should.
The Lesson
The local habitat has always had the best vernacular architecture. Birds, boar, foxes, hedgehogs and all the rest of them understand the assignment far better than we do. They use what belongs to the landscape, fit within its limits, and ask no unnecessary questions.
In that sense, I have always admired the original peoples who understood how to touch the earth lightly and live with the seasons rather than against them. I do not pack up and move with the weather, but I do understand the principle. Nature does not need us to improve it. It needs us not to ruin the arrangement.
That is why the move inland mattered so much.
We had lived in Pego and Brejos for almost ten years and I would not trade those years for anything. They gave us the dawns, the long walks, the shifting coast, the rice fields, the fog, the estuary, the memories and the beginnings of everything that followed.
But the forest gave us sanctuary. It gave Bob and Mary a kingdom where they could be fully themselves, and in doing so gave me something else entirely: the ability to enjoy the coast with gratitude, and then return home to peace.
Choosing Sanctuary
That, I think, is the strategic decision that changes a life.
Not simply buying in a beautiful place, but choosing the right relationship with it. Choosing land with character and life rather than land with the loudest development potential. Choosing somewhere that can remain itself, even as the world around it accelerates. Choosing stewardship over control. Choosing to fit in rather than take over.
Because the truth is that the outside world will keep expanding. It will keep building, densifying, marketing and improving. Some of that change will be sensible, some of it less so, and none of it will pause to ask whether you preferred things as they were in 2010.
But if you choose carefully, and care properly, you can still create a sanctuary of your own within it. Not by shutting the world out entirely, but by protecting a piece of it well enough that it continues to feel alive.
In Loving Memory
Bob and Mary are no longer just a memory to me. They are living entities in everything I see, feel, scent, hear and breathe across this land. In the damp pine needles after rain. In the early light through the trees. In the rustle from the brush that still makes me look up. In the Duke of Cork. In Bo. In every quiet return home.
By looking after two abandoned souls, I learned something much larger than how to care for a pair of dogs. I learned that when we protect the vulnerable things around us — an animal, an old tree, a corridor of wild land, a place that still deserves to remain itself — we often end up protecting something in ourselves as well.
And if there is a lesson worth taking from Bob and Mary, perhaps it is simply this:
choose your sanctuary wisely, fit into it gently, and protect its right to remain alive.
July 2026
Ronald Wayne
Notes From The Coast & Real Estate
Previous – Discover why the greatest luxury in Alentejo is often the space surrounding you.
Anthony The Architects Seafood Lunch →
NFTC Hub – Return to all our Notes From The Coast.
Next – A reminder that the sea’s greatest dangers are not always visible from the shore.
A Bife Lesson On Being A Brit →
Discover why Portugal does not have a single, complete Multiple Listing Service (MLS), and why that matters when searching for property in Comporta and along the Alentejo Coast.
Pego Beach is one of the most established beachside locations in Comporta, but is better understood as a corridor rather than a single real estate development.
Pego Beach Comporta Property →