About

I didn't set out to build a tour company.

I set out to stop feeling like London was the only option. Unsignal is what came out of actually going and looking.

I'm Dal. By day I lead product on AI projects at a research institute in London. I've spent most of my career in Hackney, in meeting rooms, on trains, telling myself the usual story - work hard, pay the rent, enjoy it when you can.

That story held up fine for a while. Then it just started to feel thin. Not dramatic, not a crisis - just a quiet, persistent sense that the maths didn't add up. Good job, good pay, and somehow still tired, still short on time, still paying most of it straight back out in rent.

I ended up staying at an eco-village near Silves, in the Algarve, for a stretch that was only supposed to be a short trip. It turned into weeks. Not because it was a holiday - it wasn't, particularly - but because it was the first time in years I'd actually watched people build a different answer to the same question I'd been quietly asking myself.

Lower cost of living. More time. Actual neighbours, not just people you share a hallway with. Nobody there was selling enlightenment. They were just living differently, on purpose, and being fairly matter-of-fact about it.

"I didn't want a retreat. I wanted proof it was actually possible - and I wanted to bring other Londoners to go and see it for themselves."

Why a tour, and not a pitch

I'm not trying to convince anyone to move to Portugal. Most people who come on a tour won't. That's fine - that was never really the point. The point is that most of us are choosing between two bad options: stay and keep paying, or leap and hope for the best. Almost nobody gets to actually see the third option up close before deciding anything.

Unsignal exists to close that gap. One week, small group, real place, no pitch at the end of it - just an honest answer to whether this could be for you.

Who this is for

People from London who are tired at the renting crisis, worn down by a city that's stimulating but expensive, and quietly wondering if there's more than this - without wanting to blow their whole life up to find out.