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What drives a clown? Where does this energy come from? The driving force to leave everything behind and to say you don’t want to pursue your profession any more generates huge strength. It is the possibility to seek out and experience an absolute feeling of happiness. The path that I followed led me to a place where 20 people come together who write music, do choreography, who look for places that are abstract, who use a eucalyptus forest as a message and a stage. The impetus is different to 20 years ago. But the energy is the same. That you …

Via Algarviana – Rota Vicentina – Rota do Pescador   Day 1 – Aljezur – Odeceixe (18 km) On this first day of April, the sky is as I know it in April: unsettled. For the last two weeks, I’ve been walking the 250 kilometres along the Via Algarviana, with little more than a sense of the Atlantic in the near distance. Now I can raise my nose into the wind, smelling salt and all sorts of colourful things by the wayside. The lines on the paper of my map indicate a further 350 kilometres, which I welcome with a …

Packaging-free vegan summer menu for yoghurt lovers. In this vegan summer menu, I have paid attention as far as possible to the use of ingredients that can be purchased without disposable packaging. The aim is to pass on ideas about ways to avoid rubbish in the long term. The main ingredient is plant-based, home-made yoghurt, which is a common thread running through my menu planning. It all starts with the production of one’s own plant milk. We could buy milk of course, but in a household that consumes milk daily too much unnecessary plastic or too many Tetrapak cartons accumulate. …

Press release Environmental NGO A Nossa Terra demands government action once and for all over the threat of mining to Picota hillside, in Monchique. The threat which “somehow came to a standstill” six years ago, is once again menacing populations, and a local economy based on sustainable rural tourism.On the 23th of February 2017, a request by mining company Felmica was published in government newspaper Diário de República, reference: Aviso n.º 2052/2017, DR n.º 39, 2.ª Série de 23 de fevreiro. This was a repeat of the request Felmica made in 2011 for an area of 161.2 hectares. This time, …

Learning the shoemaker’s craft! Monchique’s first shoemaking apprentice took his leave from his parents on Monday, 25th April, and set off for Austria. José Pedro Mira Nunes, aged 23, had applied to ECO123 for the shoemaking apprenticeship training project. In his application, he wrote about a longstanding family tradition dating back to the time of his great-grandfather, who was making shoes in Monchique in the 1960s. The jury selected him as the first of two candidates who were suitable for this training. Having arrived at GEA in Schrems, five kilometres from the Czech border, after a three-day train journey, he …

Hydroponics + Aquaculture = Aquaponics. The first ECO123 workshop took place over a long weekend in Caldas de Monchique and was attended by twelve participants from all over Portugal. The trainers, João Cotter from Lisbon and João Vidal Lemos from Aveiro, started with a short theoretical presentation in the hotel and then all the participants moved from the seminar room to the garden. There, they inaugurated the two-by-five-metre plant pond. The first lettuce, courgette, tomato and melon seedlings were placed in the water in small baskets. The first fish from local waters were four small largemouth bass (achigã) that were …

The Sunsailer 7.0 is the first electro-solar boat to be built by the SunConcept company, in Olhão. The system of this boat, which is seven metres long and capable of accommodating up to seven people, which can be driven by anyone with a “carta de marinheiro” (sailor’s licence), allows for noise-free use, with no water pollution and no fuel costs. “It is essentially about demonstrating a concern for the environment,” says Jorge Severino, the partner responsible for the technical side. Owners can also install a sail or an igloo tent system. With two, six-horsepower electric outboard motors, the boat can …