Fantastic Festas
Our first member of staff...and our second
Portugal loves a party, and the summer season smoothly segues from festa straight into to festa.
Since most schools were out from early June the festivities have been off to a flying start with both the unusually hot weather arriving unseasonably early this year...and with a football trophy.
Beating the old enemy Spain on penalties in the UEFA Nations League final set the tone for the opening holiday weekend, then came Portugal Day and the celebration of the national epic poet was quickly followed by the Santos Populares – or Popular Saints celebrations.
If you try to get anything done in Lisbon during the second week of June around St Anthony’s Day, the phones ring out as the city comes to a standstill of block parties awash in a sea of sardines.
And there are three popular saints: António, João and Pedro. Porto goes St João crazy on the 23rd and then June rounds off with St Pedro...and that is really just the start.
Across the country, live music stages are popping up on every street corner and you can’t move for parades, bunting and long outdoor dining tables.
Here in coastal Alentejo it’s the Marchas Populares which bring the Sagres and Super Bock beer kiosks out of winter storage and music to the town squares.
Our nearest town of São Teotónio has its annual ceiling of handmade paper ribbons as the traditional mastros festival (of masts) is underway, and across the country traditional town celebrations and full-on music festivals fill the calendar from now until the autumn.
On the praias, big sea swells have been keeping the surfers entertained and the beach guards on high alert; our supermarkets are newly stocked with suncream and beach umbrellas and the summer people are starting to arrive.
Having just opened our doors for guests at our new tourist lodge – and being happily surprised at the number of bookings we’re already getting – we don’t have as much time as we did to join in the parties.
But we’ve been celebrating in our own way...with the arrival of our first member of staff to be officially on our books: Krishna Shrestha from Waling in the western region of Nepal (a bit south of Pokhara).
Krishna is a machine, whether it’s gardening, cleaning, building, or as it turns out cooking (as we signed the contract he casually mentioned working for years as an assistant chef in Dubai).
We’ve known Krishna a while now and are delighted to have him as our first employee...especially as there’s so much to do in Vale das Estrelas.
Hot on the heels of our first hire, we acquired our second member of staff, and in the fast-changing world in which we live, it will be no surprise to hear we recruited a robot.
Our daughter Oda hit the perfect creative chord by calling the pool cleaning WyBot Herbert Hoover. Herbie is already making a big impact on the infinity pool...if not yet and beyond.
While Ana selflessly held the fort for our guests, I did manage a couple of hours at one event that no self-respecting establishment like ours can afford to miss: the local tourism festival Fei-Tur.
Being in the biggest regional tourist town of Vila Nova de Milfontes and on the fabulous Mira River estuary, the FEIra de TURismo do SW leans heavily on the river and ocean sports side of things with surf schools and stand up paddle boarding.
But it’s a feira packed with local producers, peddling cheese and wine, honey and olive oil, preserves and cakes com or sem gluten and on the strong booze front, a muddle of Medronho-makers (or whatever the collective noun might be: a mess? a mash? a murder? Let’s hope not).
It was a collection of exactly the kind of people we need to meet in order to keep our guests happy.
Our fabulous lawyer Ana Aleixo treated her husband Sérgio to a surprise Vale das Estrelas staycation, our brilliant bank manager Wilson Gonçalves dropped by with the family to see what all the money’s been spent on, and we’ve been welcoming some pioneering guests who found us online and wanted to be the first to discover our place (and tell their friends).
We’ve been making daily breakfast spreads for a lovely German couple, a few young Lisbonites have been spending nights escaping the big city and our first venture into painting retreats with Ed Sumner in October is pretty much sold out already.
A big part of what we want to do is introduce visitors to the tastes of Alentejo – the wines from the interior and from our region, the fresh fish and the black pork, and so a local tourism fair was the perfect place to collect a tote-bag full of business cards and flyers and a notebook full of numbers.
It was also a great reminder of all the things visitors to our area can see and do – beyond visiting all the beautiful beaches – and it means I’ll have to update the guides left in our rooms for guests.
Horse riding, motorcross schools, freediving courses, bird watching guides, kayak tours and boat trips, and foiling...whatever that is.
But at the heart of it all is the hundreds of kilometres of walking and cycling paths which are bringing thousands more visitors to our Costa Vicentina every year.
The number of people hitting the trails is growing at an astonishing rate – the bars and restaurants along the clifftop route of the Fisherman’s Trail are constantly busy with resting hikers from all over the world newly discovering our wild Atlantic coast.
The Rota Vicentina had a whole line of exhibition tents at this year’s Fei-Tur festival and was promoting cycling routes as well as the stunning inland long-distance hiking path and the circular trails.
Pedro Almeida is the head of cycling, and was buzzing with excitement over the free downloadable maps, a new range of automatic bicycle service stations and how electric bikes are attracting a new type of cyclist.
“The Fisherman’s Trail is incredibly popular as people want to see the coast – and it’s a beautiful coast,” said our friend Pedro.
“But we have so many circular walking and cycling routes and we’d like to bring people here for slow tourism and natural tourism – to spend more time in one place and learn more about the local food and culture.”
Many long-distance hikers stay in a different town or village each night as they track all or some of the 226.5km from São Torpes (near Sines) to Sagres and across to Lagos.
Sunday Times chief foreign correspondent Christina Lamb – a friend from when I lived in Afghanistan – visited while walking a long stretch of the Fisherman’s Trail.
Wearing her travel writer’s hat she seemed to enjoy the hike and visiting our place in an area she first discovered many years ago.
Like many others she used a tour company to shuttle her luggage around. Transport companies are thriving and the local guesthouses are heaving, but they have a a lot more work to do with one-night stops rather than week-long visits.
It is something we’ve already realised running a small eco-luxe lodge: the costs of cleaning and laundry push us towards a two or three night minimum stay.
But with trailhead drop-offs and pick-ups, local bike hire suggestions, scenic circular routes, and a peaceful place to return to — where guests can rest their legs by the pool after a long day on the trails, sip a glass of Alentejo wine, and enjoy a fresh fish or black pork dinner with a stunning view— we believe we’re offering something really special.
“We want to encourage responsible travel and responsible tourism: to attract people to do more different activities. There are boat rides, a bird watching festival – and of course cycling,” said Pedro.
“The great thing about e-bikes now is you don’t have to be an athlete or to bring your own bike with you – you just need to know how to ride a bike and then you can discover more places.”
And as luck would have it, the focus of the Rota Vicentina circular walking and cycling paths is all around us and the inland Historical Way crosses the bottom of our valley.
The SW coast of Alentejo is well worth a visit...for hiking, biking, wine tasting, surfing...and foiling (whatever that is).
We love our Atlantic coast and while we keep quiet about our hidden coves and wild beaches, a lot more people are now starting to discover this still quite secret corner of the country.
So now’s the time to come and see us...before everyone else does!
As usual your latest blog gladdens my heart. Thank you so much. It does seem now that you are getting off the ground. Terrific news about the art experience with Ed. Great that you have two new employees. You certainly make it sound so exciting, and you offer something beautiful. I do hope that you continue to get lots of PG’s . With love, Annie x x x Have a magic summer 😁😁
Congratulations on your dream come to life. I remember reading the travails of early days and how hard you’ve worked to make it come true.