Wednesday 6 October 2010

The Algarve: Depredations and Delights

What's Gone Wrong with the Algarve, and Why We Keep Coming Back Anyway

September 2021

We have passed our 'fit to fly' Covid test, so very soon (barring unforeseen circumstances), we will be arriving in the Algarve for our 21st autumn visit this century (not to mention occasional spring visits in the 80s and 90s). This is, of course the 22nd autumn since January 2000, so we missed one. No prizes for guessing it was last year when our flight was cancelled just weeks before departure. We are fortunate, as this blog testifies, to have been able to visit many other countries, but we keep returning to the Algarve. This post was written 11 years ago to explain why we still find this over-exploited coast a place of delight - and it now also has to explain why we missed it so much last year.

October 2010

First published on the 6th of October 2010, this post now has several updates and many later pictures
Links are to other Algarve posts on this blog

The unhealthily pale old man and the sea, Algarve Oct 2010

We have just returned from our seventeenth trip to the Algarve. It was simply a holiday; unless you hail from Ulan Bator or the Kamchatka Peninsula it is impossible to pretend you are a traveller in southern Portugal, there are only locals, expatriates and tourists.

It was different thirty years ago when my father retired and bought a house by a golf course in the new development of Vale do Lobo. In 1982 we drove through the scruffy town of Almançil, skirted a sun blasted vineyard and passed several shepherds watching their grazing flocks before reaching the half finished ‘luxury resort’. There we left Portugal and entered never-never land. It is a long time now since that road has seen a shepherd. New villas, a dozen restaurants, an outbreak of tennis courts and a chic garden centre jostle for space where once there was only dust. Freshly painted Almançil is today packed with estate agents’ offices, banks and golf equipment shops. The N125 – the main road running the length of the Algarve - by-passed the town centre long ago and has itself been reduced to the status of a country road by the construction of the A22 motorway. Val do Lobo is no longer half finished, but runs into Dunas Douradas, which runs into Quinta de Lago, equally upmarket but becoming more and more characterless with each successive building phase.

That house on a golf course and a much younger me, Val do Lobo, April 1992

And it is not just this corner of the Algarve that has seen the developer’s bulldozers. Villas have sprouted from Vila Real on the Spanish border to Sagres in the west, leaving only windswept Cape St Vincent untouched. New resorts like Vilamoura and Praia de Rocha have sprung up, while old fishing towns like Albufeira and Quateira have blossomed into major holiday centres.

My parents’ house was sold years ago. In 2005 Lynne and I found a comfortable ground floor apartment with a pleasant garden in Carvoeiro, and we have returned to it year after year. [And returned again in 2021, our landlords are now long-standing friends]. Situated in a narrow ravine running down to a beach that is little more than a breach in the cliffs, Carvoeiro has managed to retain more of a village feel than its larger neighbours. But even here, in defiance of geography, villas have climbed the walls of the ravine and spread along the cliff tops. In the streets you hear more English and German than Portuguese and in the summer the locals, as in much of the Algarve, are a minority in their own town. Even in winter there is no relief as the extensive and largely grey-haired expatriate community – British, German, Dutch, Irish, Scandinavian – avoid the rigours of the Northern winter in a region where frost is virtually unknown and even in January temperatures reach 17°.

Carvoeiro Beach

It is not just their languages the tourists bring with them, it is also their food. Carvoeiro’s out of town supermarkets sell sliced white bread, baked beans, pastis and gouda cheese. The village boasts an ‘English Restaurant’ and other establishments offer ‘all day English breakfast’ or ‘traditional Sunday roasts.’ ‘Pubs’ sell beer to foreigners and entertain them with all the premiership football matches that Sky Sport can provide.

And do the locals complain? They must do, it is human nature, but they do so quietly and among themselves. Within a generation tourism has turned the Algarve from a forgotten backwater of Western Europe’s poorest country into a thriving, prosperous province with a quality of life outsiders envy.

In the 1980s old ladies wore black dresses and thick stockings with little black trilbies - always a size too small – perched on their heads and secured by a scarf tied beneath the chin. Picking one’s way through the potholes - a major feature of any road other than the N125 (and of that, too, west of Lagos) – the sight of horses pulling brightly painted traditional carts was commonplace. Back then, the carts were painted, but little else was. Buildings were usually grubby and dilapidated, chipped azulejo tiles and sagging roofs were normal. Now the black dresses, trilbies, potholes and carts have gone. Even the remotest village has a good road, and the houses are gleaming with white paint; tiled façades are grouted and washed, one wall often painted in a pastel blue or pink.

The old cuboid fishermans' cottages of Olhão, now all smart and clean (2010).

There are improvements every year. Loulé market, for many years our first port of call from the airport, was closed in 2006 and 2007. It reopened in a bright, clean and airy new building. Everything was back as it was, only its soul was missing. Between 2008 and 2009 the centre of Carvoeiro was extensively remodelled. In 2010, when Portugal had theoretically run out of money for public works, we arrived to find Loulé’s main thoroughfare closed and workmen busy laying the small grey cobbles that are Portugal’s favoured surface for pedestrian areas.

Carcoeiro's new centre (Oct 2009)

I preferred the old unimproved Algarve, the Algarve that did not pander to north European tastes, the Algarve where it was possible to feel like a traveller not merely a holidaymaker. I must not be unreasonable, deprivation may not have been abolished but you have to look harder to find it, and I cannot expect people to live in picturesque poverty to please me. But something has been lost in the process.

So if the Algarve has been comprehensively built over and ruined, why do we continue to visit? Why have we been there every year for the last eleven years? [now 21 out of 22 this century]

Because despite the depredations of the developers, despite the efforts of those tourists who arrive in a foreign country and try to make it exactly like the one they just left (except for the climate!), most of what made the Algarve great remains intact.

Maria’s restaurant, which has stood on the beach at Dunas Douradas for over thirty years, provides a fine example (well, it did until 2012). In the early nineties, as the picture shows, we approached the then isolated beach hut via a cliff top path. By 2000, erosion required us to take a route through woods behind. One year we arrived to find building plots staked out among the pines and a year later Maria’s had become fully integrated into the urbanizacão.

The path to Maria's in 1992

In 2008, we went there after our first visit to the newly reopened Loulé market. ‘I expect,’ I said, in jest while driving through Dunas Douradas, ‘we’ll find Maria’s has been knocked down and rebuilt, too.’ And, of course, it had. The old wooden hut had been replaced by a new structure, still wooden, but no longer a hut.

Until 2008 Maria's was a hut, then this happened

What had not changed, though, was the quality of the food. Maria’s grilled squid is so fresh it could almost swim, so perfectly cooked its flesh is firm, yet yielding. Served with boiled potatoes, a glass of white wine and a view of the sun sparkling on the sea, it is a simple yet deeply satisfying pleasure. [Sadly, Maria's changed hands and name in 2012. The magic went and we no longer go there].

Maria's same food in a smart new building, Oct 2011 - the year before Maria's sad demise

And then there is the climate. The Algarve enjoys more sunshine than anywhere else in Europe and in autumn, when we usually visit, the temperature reaches a pleasant 25° or more. A laze on the beach and a dip in the sea are quite possible well into November. Then, just as autumn becomes chilly, spring arrives; there is no winter. But it is not only temperatures. The gentle blueness of the sky and the extraordinary quality of the light lift the soul, while the white painted buildings shimmer in the sun, and bougainvillea trails a purple blaze across the walls.

Bougainvillea on a vila in Carvoeiro - its not all purple (2010)

The very air is a delight. I know of no other country where it is a pleasure simply to breath. The scented air is obvious from the moment you step from the plane, even over the jet fuel smells of the airport. Wafts of scent pass over you everywhere, and if you become habituated during the day, just walking into the early morning garden provides an instant reminder that you are living somewhere special.

Ferragudo 2007

To get away from the coastal strip and drive along a country road is a journey among delights. Nothing matches an orange orchard in spring, but the warm woods - eucalyptus, figs, olives, pines, and, higher up, the gnarled cork oaks - are a pleasure to the eye and nose in every season. Huge cactuses and prickly pears cling to old walls and villages bask in the sun.

Away from the coast and off the beaten track, October 2011

‘Traditional Sunday roast’ may be available, but the overwhelming majority of the Algarve’s many hundreds of restaurants are more tipico, specialising in fish as fresh as it can only be within minutes of the fishing port. After so many visits we have inevitably developed favourites. A visit to Dona Barca in in Portimão for sardines is a must. The décor is functional - they retain the once typical long communal tables - the fish are barbecued outside in the square and the prices are low enough to be reminiscent of the good old days.

Sardines at Dona Barca with Mike and Alison (Oct 2016) I am delighted to say that since we first ate here in 2003, the prices have risen (but not by much) and nothing else has changed. Why should it when they are packed on a Thursday lunchtime

At Dois Irmão in Faro, another venerable restaurant, I can recommend to the pork and clams, while Lynne has particularly enjoyed both grilled cuttlefish and goat cutlets. Somewhat exceptionally, these restaurants are frequented by locals as much as tourists.

Lynne and a cuttlefish Dois Irmão, Faro (Oct 2013)

Elsewhere the fish of the day – usually sea bass, or golden bream - is reliably excellent as are swordfish or tuna steaks. Fish stews and cataplanas using the wonderful Portuguese refogado are based on olive oil, tomatoes and garlic as is the delightfully messy seafood rice. Salt cod - the local staple - is always worth a try, and Portugsl, not Nando's, is the home of chicken piri-piri. I shudder at cafés offering ‘all day English breakfast’, but mainly I feel sorry for their customers. When it comes to the pleasures of the table, the Algarve ranks with the best in the world.

Fish Cataplana, Restaurant Vimar, Carvoeiro Oct 2011

You do not have to eat in restaurants to eat well. Every town and village has a market selling the freshest of fish. Chouriço (sausage) and presunto (air dried ham) are wonderful, the scrawny looking chickens have more meat than you could imagine and taste like chicken used to. There are olives and salted almonds which go down so well with a glass of port, as do the cheeses which range from the mildest, youngest goat curd, to curado cheeses matured to a rich stinkiness.

A light lunch of Chouriço, Cheese and salad

Portugal’s inexplicably underrated wines are available at all prices from negligible to eye-watering. Even the wines of the Algarve, long ignored (and with good reason), are improving. I am not a Cliff Richard fan, but his Quinta do Cantor started a trend that has benefiting producers and drinkers alike.

It may be grossly overdeveloped, but nothing can change the sunshine and the scented air and nothing has changed the quiet and unassuming people of the Algarve who the vast occupying army of tourists with good humour and courtesy. With rare exceptions, they deal honestly and fairly with all – which cannot be easy, given the profound ignorance and ingrained idiocy of some tourists. For all its imported faults, the heart of the Algarve still beats strongly. As long as there are squids at Marias in the sea we will return and return again. [OK, Maria's went 5 years ago but Martin's in Carvoeiro grills a pretty fair squid]

This post was (2010) featured on the Algarve Daily News

Sunday 12 September 2010

A Remarkable Story of a Khartoum Taxi Driver

'Sudan ma kwaiyis, Sudani kwaiyis’ (Sudan bad, Sudanese good) was a phrase we heard many times during the months we lived in Khartoum. If the speaker was a taxi driver, the next phrase was usually ‘Sharia ma kwaiyis’ (Road not good) as his cab bumped into a pothole the size of a modest meteor strike.

In July 1987 Lynne and I had climbed out of a rut by taking jobs in an international school in Khartoum, dragging six-year-old Siân along with us. We intended to stay for two years, but contractual difficulties meant we were home in November.

In the late nineteen eighties Sudan enjoyed a brief flowering of parliamentary democracy between the Numeiri dictatorship and an Islamic fundamentalist military government. Sadly the continual fragmenting and rebuilding of coalitions and shuffling of ministers was more  rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic than governing, and everyone knew that a coup was on the way.

The Sudanese have been ill served by their governments for decades, but if the country is not good, the people really are. They cheerfully mock their own inefficiency and lamentable time keeping, but they are intensely proud of their reputation for hospitality, friendliness and honesty and they work hard at living up to it. Nowhere else have we been welcomed into the homes of so many local people, nowhere else have small acts of kindness by complete strangers been such a commonplace. But the events I will describe out-Sudanese the Sudanese. Such stories have people shaking their heads and saying: ‘you couldn’t make it up!’ Actually I could, but I didn’t. It happened exactly as I tell it.

In two months we had seen only one camel. Feeling this was less than our due, Lynne, Siân, and I, along with our friend Martin, decided to visit the Omdurman camel market.

On a warm September day (most September days top 40ºC) we walked out onto the sandy square behind our home in the southern suburbs of Khartoum and flagged down a taxi. Although we lived in a modern block surrounded by other new or partly finished residences we were half a mile from the tarmac road. Undeterred, taxi drivers criss-crossed the desert on invisible tracks.

We quickly found a ride, but not all the way to Omdurman; many Khartoum drivers dislike venturing west of the river. We negotiated a fare into the centre, where it would be easier to find a driver prepared to cross the White Nile.

Outside the main souk we found a cab heading west and drove out along the south bank of the Blue Nile. ‘El Khartum’ means ‘the elephant’s trunk’, a fanciful allusion to the shape of the land where the two Niles meet. At the tip of the trunk Khartoum ends and the White Nile Bridge begins.

The Blue Nile really is blue (well, it is bluer than the Danube). It is huge, clear and serene. The turbid waters of the White Nile are nowhere near white and it is a far less romantic river. Even a thousand miles from its delta, it is a substantial body of water and the bridge is long. Crossing it is a journey from one world to another; from bustling, cosmopolitan Khartoum to the sprawling overgrown village that embodies the heart of the Sudanese people. Khartoum had the presidential palace, office blocks, empty international hotels and the embassies of every country in the world. Omdurman had the Mahdi’s tomb, a small museum containing relics of the Gordon/Kitchener era and endless streets of hot sand, lined with single story dwellings and ramshackle workshops.

“Wen?” said our driver as we arrived in Omdurman. This means ‘where?’

“Souk jamal” I replied in my pidgin Arabic. Classical Arabic speakers despise Sudanese as being a pidgin language. If that is fair, and it is probably not, I spoke pidgin pidgin.

The driver was unsure of the camel market’s location, so we stopped him near the town centre and climbed out of the car. Feeling that he was failing in his duty of hospitality the cabbie accosted a passer-by. The passer-by was also unsure so he asked someone else. Minutes later we were surrounded by a crowd, all talking at once, all giving advice and all doing it in a language of which we had only a very rudimentary grasp.

With a coup in the offing, we had been advised (by the British Consul, no less), that Omdurman was safe to visit, but it would be wise to keep a low profile. That was exactly what we were not doing.

I fished a 20 Sudanese Pound note from my shirt pocket and gave it to the driver We thanked the crowd and walked off towards a distant television mast, which was, we had read, a marker for the camel market.

The official exchange rate was LS2.5 to £1 sterling, making 20 Sudanese pounds £8. At that rate the tiny chickens in Agami’s Supermarket (think corner shop, halve the space and remove nine tenths of the stock) were over a tenner. The street rate was LS13 to £1 so, realistically, I had paid about £1.50. Khartoum taxis are unmetered and although we usually negotiated a fare in advance we had not done so this time as we were unsure of how long the trip would be. I knew I had overpaid him, but not by much, and we wanted to get away from the crowd without fussing over small change.

We never did find the camel market but we did find a car parts market. Oil smeared blankets spread on the sand served as stalls. One had a stripped down diesel engine, the next a pair of well-used shock absorbers, a third a collection of nuts and bolts, some of which fitted each other. Poverty is a powerful incentive to inventive recycling. As if to emphasise that there was not a single working engine in the place, customers took their purchases away on donkey carts.

A week later, the four of us were walking along Jamariyah, Khartoum’s main drag. Behind us someone shouted “Hey, Khawaja!”

‘Khawaja’ literally means ‘foreigner’ but colloquially it means ‘white European foreigner’. Such people were thin on the ground, even in 'cosmopolitan' Khartoum, so there was little doubt who he was shouting at.

I turned and saw a soldier running towards us, waving. The Sudanese do not run. At 40º running is like wading through hot soup. Local people proceed with a languid, loose-limbed lope. Even us stiff North Europeans had loosened up since we had been there, and we had slowed down too. Not only was he running, he was running in army uniform. 1980s Sudanese army uniforms looked like they came second-hand from some Eastern European army where a cool climate had dictated the material. And not all Sudanese army boots had laces.

He arrived breathless and sweating. When he had composed himself he said:

“You take taxi Omdurman.”

We told him we did not want to go to Omdurman at that moment.

“No,” he said, “You take taxi this man.”

A figure emerged from the bustle of the street. He was some thirty years old, of medium height and slim build with a thin sensitive face. Like almost everyone else he wore a sun-bleached white robe and a small white turban.

“Taxi this man. Last week.”

Was he the driver who had taken us to Omdurman? Riding in taxis was a daily occurrence; I could not remember all the drivers.

“He say you pay more.”

“No.” I replied, trying to sound firm. “I paid twenty pounds - ishriin jineeh - it was enough.”

The soldier looked exasperated. Having tested his physical resources running after us, he now found his linguistic resources being stretched beyond breaking point.

“No, he say you pay too more.”

The taxi driver’s hand disappeared inside his robe and reappeared clutching his wallet. He extracted a brown LS10 note and tried to give it to me.

Lynne and Martin and I looked at each other. None of us wanted to be the first to voice our thoughts, what seemed to be happening was too unbelievable.

But we had to believe it. This man had been so troubled by the over payment that, seeing us in the street - and we must have been a distinctive little group - he had enlisted a friend as interpreter and chased after us to give us our change.

I was, until I retired, a teacher so although I am not poor, I do not consider myself a rich man. On the other hand, each month I was paid five times the annual earnings of an average Sudanese. He was offering me what I thought of as loose change; to him it represented a significant part of a day’s pay.

Of course, we did not take the money, but refusing without giving offence required diplomacy. Happily, the encounter ended with smiles and handshakes all round.

I hope the driver felt happy, keeping both the money and a clear conscience. I felt elated. A world in which people do such things was a better world than I had taken it for. I also felt humble, if fate had dealt the cards the other way round would I have acted in that way? I honestly doubt it. Would a London cabbie have acted that way? Probably not. What happened was extreme, even for Khartoum, but could it have happened anywhere else in the world? It is difficult to imagine.

Sunday 15 August 2010

Goldcliff, Redwick and Magor

Wales
Gwent (Monmouthshire)

Pottering back slowly from South Wales to Staffordshire we turned off the M4 west of Newport and followed the ring road south of the city. We passed the old transporter bridge and the docks before reaching Liswerry, where a minor road took us into the Caldicot Level, the alluvial wetland that lies between the M4 and the Severn estuary. This dank, flat marsh was the home of my paternal grandmother’s family until they moved into Newport at the start of the last century, and we were in search of family graves.

Where we Going?

When I was small my (maternal) grandmother taught me to recite the 13 counties of Wales. The local government re-organisation in 1974 reduced that to 8 while another in 1996 introduced 22 single-tier local authorities which now call themselves counties. A further suggested rearrangement in 2015 was overtaken by events. To avoid confusion (largely mine) I will stick to the 13 'historic counties' I learned at my grandmother's knee. These counties were created by Thomas Cromwell at the request of Henry VIII in 1530.

The Historic Counties of Wales

SE Wales with the approximate extent of the cities of Cardiff and Newport
and position of the relevant villages
I prefer the old counties, though, this map appends an inappropriate 'shire' to Glamorgan among others. My father, a native of Newport always claimed to be a citizen of the Autonomous State of Gwent, though he spent his last 45 years in Buckinghamshire. I am thus duty-bound to prefer 'Gwent' to 'Monmouthshire'.

Goldcliff

We drove through depressing territory all the way from the last urban and industrial gasp of Newport right out to where wet cows chew dispiritedly in meadows of long wet grass. Drizzle fell from a grey sky; it seemed the natural state of affairs.

Goldcliff has no gold and no cliff. The name originates from the siliceous limestone bank by the coast at Hill Farm; sadly quartz is not gold and an 18m high bank is neither a hill nor a cliff.  This world is flat and protected from the sea by a concrete wall. Drainage channels covered in green scum keep the land just about dry enough to be pasture. We found no centre to Goldcliff, though there is a church somewhere, but what we did find was a mile long dribble of houses lining the narrow road. There are well built farmhouses and a sprinkling of new buildings, many of them large, some of them very large. People with money have chosen this bleak place to build their homes. I have no idea why. I am forced to conclude that this landscape has charms I fail to see.

Redwick

We had to track a mile or two inland and then back out toward the estuary to find Redwick. The village is remoter and closer to the coast than Goldcliff, not that there is any sign of salt water. There is no harbour between Newport and Chepstow, the tidal mudflats being unable to shelter even the smallest fishing boats, and the villages have turned their back on the coast and made their living from agriculture - at least until the boom in commuter housing.

Around Redwick the land seems lusher and the atmosphere less desolate – though perhaps I was fooled by a pause in the drizzle. The village does at least have a centre - a pub facing a church across a bend in the road. The pub looks well kept and cheerful, festooned with colourful hanging baskets. It also boasts a ‘Piste de Boule’ suggesting the Bristol Channel is not the limit of its horizons.

St Thomas', Redwick

Outside the church a stone shelter houses a collection of artefacts from the agricultural past, most notably a cider mill and press. I had never thought of my Monmouthshire ancestors as cider drinkers despite the county bordering the English cider heartland.

Cider Mill and Press, Redwick

St Thomas’ church is an ambitious structure, big enough to accommodate the whole of Redwick and still squeeze in several bus loads of visitors. They are proud of their peal of bells and, helpfully, have a list of who is buried in the churchyard. None of them were the ancestors we sought.

St Thomas' Redwick

Outside, on the porch, a scratch shows the high water mark of the great flood of January 1607, though as New Year then started in March the scratch is dated 1606. On the 30th of that month a huge storm surge – or possibly a tsunami – rolled up the Bristol Channel. The Welsh coast was inundated from Laugharne in Carmarthenshire all the way up to Chepstow, while on the English side the water swept across the Somerset levels as far inland as Glastonbury Tor. 200 square miles were flooded, livestock and villages were swept away and over 2000 people died. And this was where my ancestors chose to live.

Flood marker, St Thomas', Redwick 

Barely a thousand people live in Goldcliff and Redwick put together but Magor is a much bigger village, maybe even a town. We parked by the ruins of the 13th century Procurator’s House and strolled into the central square. There are dignified old buildings, shops, pubs, restaurants and a profusion of hanging baskets and flowerbeds. The town looks smart, freshly painted and prosperous. It is also far enough inland to have grown a modern estate to the south, spreading up the side of the rise which protects Magor from the sea. To the north there is a little industry, the M4 and Magor’s very own motorway service station.

Magor

If Redwick church is too big for the village, the 13th century builders of St Mary's evidently expected Magor to grow into a city. 

St Mary's Magor

It is surrounded by a well-tended burial ground and we scanned a few gravestones searching for the ancestral Attewell family.

Magor churchyard

Lynne is openly scornful (but, I think, secretly impressed) that the graves of my mother’s family can usually be found by locating the largest monument in the cemetery. It worked at Trealaw where my great-great grandfather’s statue sits on a plinth even Nelson might envy while his son and much of the rest of the family lie under a substantial tangle of angels and cherubs in the more bucolic setting of Penderyn. The biggest monument in Magor churchyard is not huge or excessively showy, but it does tower over its rivals and yes, it is the resting place of the Attewells.

Me and the Attewell Monument, Magor

The spire-shaped monument was built to mark the grave of Mary Attewell, my great-great-great grandmother who died in May 1887. My great-great-great grandfather William Attewell joined her there in 1890, followed by an assortment of sons, daughters and in-laws though not my great-great grandfather Thomas Attewell who was born in Magor in 1833 but had moved to Newport before he died in 1917.

The grave of Mary Attewell, my three greats grandmother

Inside the church we met a friendly local engaged in writing a history of the church. Old photographs, she informed us, showed the now weathered Attewell monument to have once been shining white. Maybe they, too, enjoyed being just a little showy.

The Attewells had a farm near Magor and their sons and daughters married natives of Goldcliff and Redwick. They clearly made some money; William and Mary lived lives which were long and, I presume, comfortable by the standards of the day. I was surprised to find that all three villages were prosperous and remain so, though now for rather different reasons. Clearly there are those who do not find the landscape of the Caldicot Level desolate and depressing but I am not one of them. I am glad Thomas Attewell left, even if Newport is hardly the city of anybody’s dreams. They all went eventually, but even so the population of the coastal wetlands looks to be growing, not shrinking. And as for the people who live there now – well they’re welcome to it; this branch of the Attewell family is unlikely to want it back.