Off we go to Castro Verde, for the Julgado de Paz. Arbitration court.
Nope, no there, it's at your house
Got there late - Grumpy has never driven so fast - and thought, well, that's it, we've lost the case. And all my prep too
The judge, her clerk, them, their solicitor and ours. Oh and next door had a translator too. Then us. All walking up and down the access and chatting about rights, legal stuff etc.
After two hours, the upshot is - we fill in an on-line form to ask for a licence to cut four branches. Which our lovely neighbour Rita is going to do for us. We have three days to do it and then prove that it's done. If we don't hear from them in 30 days, we cut the branches down.
We do not have to move our wall with the electrics, nor do we move the fence, even though it varies between 9.50 metres and 7.60 metres, although they wanted it legally changed
And remove that plant - which is on common land - so stuff that, that won't happen
They will make a new access, across their field.
And so now we wait for the next thing, which no doubt, will be electric and water across the access, which isn't going to happen.
As Nuno, our solicitor said, he thinks that he owns the land, not that he just has access over it.
Our problem will be, if the cutting of the branches is not allowed, he will want access - permanent access - across our field. Big problem, hopefully that won't happen.
And no, we didn't speak to them, although we had death glares from them both
So we went down to the bar and had a few beers