A sharp spike of rock rose root, a pair of cheap plastic sandals and a steep hillside in rural Alentejo nearly brought down a man who once walked through minefields for a living. Alastair Leithead, the former BBC war correspondent who now runs an off-grid guest retreat in Portugal's quietest region, has written about the injury that finally taught him what his boots were for.
The setup was mundane. Walking down through scrubland to lunch at the property he runs with his wife Ana, Leithead's flimsy footwear offered no resistance when a woody root from an esteva plant drove centimetres through the sole and deep into his foot. He initially played it down as a scratch. It wasn't. Weeks of pain, daily tramadol and a round of hospital visits — Santiago do Cacém, Alvor, Guia and Lisbon — followed before an MRI finally showed what X-rays and ultrasounds couldn't: plant matter doesn't show up on scans, and half a plant was lodged inside his foot. Surgeons eventually removed three fragments of wood, one 2cm long.
The timing could hardly have been worse. The accident hit at the height of the summer season, leaving Ana and their daughter Oda, visiting from Los Angeles, to run the property alone. They pulled it off — the season was busy and, by his account, successful — while he recovered. The stitches are out, the painkillers are gone, and proper safety shoes are on order for everyone on the team.
There's a broader point here for anyone dreaming of a rural reboot in southern Europe. Leithead spent years on a building site in flip-flops and considered himself lucky. In the countryside, the hazards aren't exotic: wet rooftops, strimmers, chainsaws and scrubby plants with roots sharp enough to penetrate thin soles. His advice, hard-earned, is blunt — invest in real footwear and take health and safety seriously, because help is slow, patchy or expensive to find when you're off the grid.
For travellers, the story is a window into a particular kind of Portuguese holiday: staying at a small, hands-on off-grid retreat in Alentejo, where breakfast is served in a clubhouse, gravel paths lead to guest rooms, and the owners genuinely do everything themselves. It's also a practical warning if you plan to hike the region's dry, brush-covered hills — wear closed, sturdy shoes, not sandals, and watch where you put your feet. Alentejo rewards the prepared: rolling plains, cork oaks, whitewashed villages and far fewer crowds than the coast.
