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When I was still a child, at the age of eight, I learnt in geography that there were still under three billion people living on the planet. The amount of life concealed by this number meant nothing to me. Now I’m 50 years older and, in that time, the world’s population is supposed to have almost trebled. Is that right? Do you understand what I have written there, and am myself trying to understand? There are now seven and a half billion people living on our beautiful blue planet EARTH. And the number isn’t falling. I have another look at …

For 17 years, David Littlewood has been walking the back roads of the Algarve. Sometimes alone and other times with the Algarve Wednesday Walkers (AWW). ECO123 met him in São Brás de Alportel under a smoky sky and asked him whether it is a meditative process that motivates him to walk. His reply was grounded in the nature of the man, “No, it is just one foot in front of the other, and if I am with a group, there is a lot of chatter.” He explained, when he started walking in the Algarve, there was only one main guide …

Sensory herb walks add a focus to walking in the Algarve this autumn. Two field trips have been arranged to enhance awareness of flowers and herbs on clifftop paths but also in the cooler springwater-fed Mountains of Monchique. Maureen Robertson and her partner, José Melo, are offering locals and visitors the opportunity to slow down, look, touch and breathe in native plants and herbs as part of a process of conscious walking. Maureen Robertson is a Goethe-inspired Medical Herbalist, co-founder of The Scottish School of Herbal Medicine, and José Melo is a Shamanic Practitioner. They have created a course and …

You covered some 3,500 kilometres between Lisbon and Athens. How did you travel? We left Lisbon with a rucksack on our backs. We walked and hitch-hiked. What route did you follow? We caught a ferry from Lisbon to Almada. From there, we started walking in the direction of Évora, and we also hitched lifts. After this came Madrid, and then we changed route and headed for San Sebastian. How many days did it take you altogether to reach Greece? We set off on 9th July and our goal was to reach Athens by 15th August. This was the date we’d …

As a lecturer and researcher at the Centro de Investigação de Direito Económico, Financeiro e Fiscal (Research Centre on Economic, Financial and Fiscal Law) of the Faculty of Law in Lisbon, Nazaré Cabral has worked for two decades in areas such as Social Security, Public Finance and Economic and Monetary Union. She has written a large number of works in these areas since 200 and a member of the Scientific Committee of the 17th BIEN Congress. She regards the UBI as an “appealing measure”, but is hesitant about its implementation, saying that it is necessary to weigh up the “implications …

People who want to focus the general public’s attention on a special idea or product organise a festival. That is typical of our part of the world. A beer, wine, orange and medronho brandy festival, bird watching, ham, sausage, and confectionery festival. One festival follows on the heels of another throughout the year. They could also be called fairs or jamborees. What is certain is that the 5th Ameixial Walking Festival will be taking place this year from Friday 28 April to Monday 1 May in the southern municipality of Loulé. And in fact it’s good publicity for a different …