They come for a walk, especially during the low tourist season, and they animate, in increasing numbers, the quiet villages of Alcoutim and Sanlúcar do Guadiana. Nature tourism, especially hiking, brings more and more people to this border area and has been proving to be a strong ally for the economy of these two villages, which bet on uniting to take dividends from their natural aptitude for this kind of activities.
One of the main exponents of this joint venture is the Alcoutim Hiking Festival, which, as Júlio Cardoso, who coordinates the organization of the event, emphasizes, “is also from Sanlúcar”. The 2018 edition of this event took place last weekend and brought many people to these two locations. O Sul Informação he also climbed the mountain to Alcoutim and crossed the river, to witness in loco what the festival is and its impact.
«We had about 300 entries, with varied origins. Our Spanish neighbors adhere a lot since the first year. We also have resident foreigners and some demand for others who are in the Algarve on holiday. Portuguese, we have not only Algarvians, but also people from other parts of the country. People came from Lisbon and Coimbra», revealed Júlio Cardoso.
«In recent years, when we go, for example, to the Lisbon Tourism Exchange (BTL), the greatest demand is for hiking. In fact, our image has been related to this offer. And there is a growing demand, which is why we already have a lot of people coming from Lisbon and even further north», he added.
The festival is a moment that, naturally, concentrates more walkers. But that doesn't make them stop coming, at other times of the year.
“Hiking is a lever for the local economy. Since the creation of the Baixo Guadiana trails, in 2000 or so, there has been demand. Then, with the appearance of the Via Algarviana and the fact that the town is the beginning or the end of this infrastructure, a lot of people come throughout the year, especially in autumn and spring», said the festival coordinator.
The partnership created between Alcoutim and Sanlúcar de Guadiana helps to achieve these results. "All of this stems from a commitment and a strategy that we have, in which the two sides work together towards a common objective, that of developing our territories, on both sides of the border", stressed the mayor Alcoutim Osvaldo Gonçalves, in statements to the Sul Informação.
Not least because these are territories that share “the same potential and the same problems”.
“All these activities that we promote together are, in some way, a way of passing on to regional and national administrations the message that it is necessary to work together. We have to promote actions that benefit both sides of the border, so that the population settles in our territories”, reinforced our newspaper José María Pérez Díaz, mayor of Sanlúcar of Guadiana.
It was this desire to collaborate, to solve common problems, that led the two municipalities on both sides of the borders to join hands and launch this festival. And the ones who stand to gain are the hikers.
Those who come to this hiking festival have the opportunity to walk not only on already marked paths, but also others “which are guided by very interesting and beautiful paths that are not signposted, although some are about to be signposted”, explained Júlio Cardoso.
«We also have experiences in nature. This year we debuted one related to beekeeping. We also have the morning and afternoon of the pastor, which we have been doing since the first year and it is one of the star walks of the festival, which is always exhausting», he said.
Another novelty was the inclusion of the festival in the newly created Algarve Walking Season. The alcoutenejo festival was, moreover, the moment of formal launch of this project, which also includes the Walking Festival Ameixial and the hiking event that Almargem will perform for the first time, in November, in Lagos.
AWS is supported by the Algarve Tourism Region and emerged as part of an application to the Valorizar do turismo de Portugal program. Its main objective is to jointly promote the three initiatives and, therefore, attract more people to the region.
The inclusion of the Alcoutim festival in this project, as Osvaldo Gonçalves had already pointed out to the Sul Informação, allowed “to access European Union Funds, which we did not have in the past. The first four editions were fully supported by us».
Alcoutim plays on this front, but not only. «It has been growing and there are possibilities to grow more. The idea, without prejudice to being in the AWS project, is to link this event to other initiatives that we are carrying out throughout the year. We already do the night walks in the summer, which, despite not being made under the festival, may be in the future», according to Júlio Cardoso.
In October “a cross-border application was approved to carry out nature tourism days in September or October, where hiking will be privileged and we will have companies and festivals from other parts of Europe as guests”.
In other words, the hikes seem to have come to stay (and grow) in the Guadiana lane.
Photos: Hugo Rodrigues|Sul Informação
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