Hiking, culture and innovation in the way of communicating Nature Tourism went hand in hand in Serra do Caldeirão. The Walking Festival – Ameixial Walking Festival (WFA) once again had a full house, in its 6th edition, which took place at the weekend, and left its mark on the landscape.
On Friday, at a time when the first participants were arriving at the village in the interior of the municipality of Loulé, “registrations in the vast majority of activities” were already “exhausted”, according to the organization, in charge of the QRER Cooperative. This year's program, very family-oriented, but with initiatives for various tastes, including walks and workshops, proved to be appealing and once again convinced many people to climb the Serra do Caldeirão, to follow the trails of Ameixial and neighboring towns. There were even those who made the way from Loulé to this village, very close to the border with Alentejo, on foot.
Leonor Pêgo, the invited artist to create a work of art in the middle of the mountains – in this case, at the site of Vermelhos, not far from the village of Ameixial -, didn't have to walk, but that didn't mean she didn't give the body to the manifesto. The Portuguese sculptor made an artistic installation next to an ancient threshing floor, on top of a hill, an allusion to the ancient funerary monuments that exist in this area of Serra do Caldeirão, and spent several days carrying stones, to ensure that the piece was ready beforehand. from the end of the festival.
«I'm a sculptor and I've always been very interested in this type of work, in which I use natural material and that the surrounding nature offers us. I took a trip around this area with Pedro Barros [Estela/Southwest Writing Project], which was great, because not only did I get to know a lot of secrets from the archeological part, but also from the community and social part», revealed the artist, to the Sul informação.
Following this tour, «this interest in threshing floors, which have this circular but straight shape, arose». Leonor Pêgo then made “two very different proposals. One had to do with an excavation, also circular, where water could be deposited. The other one, which I ended up choosing, was to use stone and build these walls».
Having chosen the technique, the sculptor thought about the work of art itself. «It has this spherical shape, faces east and has a path in the center, so that the walker can cross it and watch the sunrise. You can also sit and rest. On the other hand, I also want nature itself to cross between these stones, which are a hard, heavy and cold element», he described.
To erect this structure, it is necessary «very careful and try to meet the requirements of balances and fittings», bearing in mind that you want the piece to stay in that place for many years. “It's a jigsaw, a kind of puzzle that is being made”, summarized Leonor Pêgo, with a smile on her face.
As has been happening since the first edition of the Ameixial Walking Festival, participants are challenged to collaborate in the preparation of works of art, which always refer to local heritage elements – the Sudoeste Writing is a central element of the WFA, but the built heritage, such as the haystacks or the tapirs (funeral monument) in the parish, are addressed in the festival's walks and parallel initiatives.
«I want to have a kind of almost performative experience here. The idea is to create a kind of human chain, so that the stones pass through everyone's hands, until they reach the sculpture. This will also give you an idea of the weight of building these walls and these wonderful houses that we see here in the mountains. And we have already enjoyed half of the work done, as the stones are already out of the ground», illustrated Leonor Pêgo.
Meanwhile, in the room of the Parish Council of Ameixal, guests were invited to the conference “Communicating Nature Destinations”, part of which came from far away, who shared innovative experiences and good practices in the promotion and structuring of Nature Tourism.
Gonçal Portabella and Arcadi Castillo, representing the Patronat de Turisme de la Diputacio de Lleida and the Institute for the Development and Promotion of Upper Pyrenees and Iran (IDAPA), Gonçalo Lima, from the Municipality of Pampilhosa da Serra, Filipe Macedo, from Tourism from the Azores, and Filipe Silva, from Turismo de Portugal, were invited by the organizers of the WFA to speak on the topic.
Also present were the mayor of Loulé Vítor Aleixo, the president of the Algarve Tourism Region Desidério Silva, the host José Carrusca, president of the Junta do Ameixial, and Sara Fernandes, president of QRER.
“The main objective was to show what is being done in terms of the dissemination of the territories. The Azores have a very strong campaign, oriented towards active tourism and a young audience. Portugal Trails, from Turismo de Portugal, gave a perspective of what is being done at national level to promote walking and cycling. Basically, we wanted to show how the territory is being promoted abroad», he explained to Sul Informação João Ministro, the company ProActiveTur, which moderated the debate.
In the case of guests coming from Catalonia, «they have been carrying out a very interesting work, which is still not done much in Portugal, which has to do with very basic things, but extremely important. An example is the identification and classification of public paths. We still have a very big problem, around here, in knowing if a path is public. The Spaniards are already making this database and they even have publications about it. On the other hand, they are at a stage where they are requalifying and regenerating public paths. We are in the opposite phase: we regularly witness the destruction of pedestrian paths».
On the other hand, in the Lleida area, in the interior of Catalonia, where the landscape is divided between the high mountains, the pre-Pyrenees and a vast plateau, with a lot of agricultural activities, there is also a strong harmony between the public and private sectors in the sense of valuing hiking and cycling tourism. This involves, not only, a standardization of the basic conditions that accommodations provide to tourists, but also a concerted communication strategy, where those who deal most with visitors are involved, including taxi drivers and employees of catering establishments .
This initial conference was also a moment of solidarity. In addition to giving space to the Pampilhosa da Serra Walking Weekend festival to promote itself, the WFA went further and will invest 750 euros in the reforestation of areas burned by last summer's fires in this municipality in the center of the country. A moment that was marked by the donation of an arbutus tree to Gonçalo Lima, who was in the Algarve to present the festival and was surprised by this offer.
Photos: Fabiana Saboya |Sul Informação and Pedro Barros|WFA/Estela Project
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