Algarve Beach Life Diaries

It's dry-as-a-bone in Algarve (and throughout Portugal), apparently.

Temperatures have been higher than the seasonal average (let's hear it for Global Warming!) and that means less water for consumption...

What does this mean? Well, if you're a holiday-maker, only there for a short time to enjoy yourself, probably not much. Even if you're in the tourist service industries, it's likely to be good news, short-term.

But, if you're in agriculture to make a living, things won't seem so rosy (or is that rosé?).

The farmers' confederation, whose acronym is, unhappily, CAP (shades of European agricultural subsidy excesses) claims that pasture land is already affected, and crops may soon follow. And, it seems, fruit trees will be thrown off-kilter too, and will flower too early.

Local environmentalists are keen to see measures put in place to conserve water use, so expect to be sharing baths and shower facilities with complete strangers this summer, if they have their way!

It is claimed that there is already a programme for efficient water usage in place, but it has not been implemented due to bureaucratic inefficiency. I, for one, refuse to believe this slur on our Algarvean civil servants!

Unfortunately, the prevalent attitude that I have encountered in Algarve is that water is, and always will be, plentiful. It will take a massive public re-education programme to change such views, and leaving it until now does smack of complacency or inefficiency (or both).

It looks like I'm not going to make it back for an Algarve break until March at the earliest, so I suppose that either I'll find that the beaches now give onto a sand-blown desert, or at least that I should have taken my own massive stocks of drinking water, and maybe even a pocket-sized reverse-osmosis machine for de-salinating sea water.

All I know is, that would require a heavy discount on my holiday tickets!

We'll see what happens. Watch this space...