We have received the following e-mail and photographs from an Amovate member…
Arrifana’s Vanishing Parking Places
Today as a resident of Aljezur I took a ride in my car to Arrifana. This as we all know is a beautiful place with a wide variety of eating and drinking establishments.
But there are huge man-made scars now on the face of the natural beauty of the area, just at a time when the busy tourist season is approaching—an industry that is the vital lifeblood of the whole of Aljezur.
Their sense of timing is woeful—why can this work not be done in the quietest of times, as far as tourism is concerned?
One would suspect that the National Park Authority is more concerned with driving tourists away than they are in attracting them, as they impose more and more parking restrictions in all the tourist hotspots on our coastline.
On arriving at Arrifana I was astonished to see the car park fenced off and filled with construction materials piled high in vast quantities, which appeared to be more for highway construction that anything else.
This is happening in a tourist area that can only be visited by car (or by those walking the Rota Vicentina, of course!) and which has no public transport facilities whatsoever.
The Camara provides a tourist road train to transport people from the town of Odeceixe to the beach during the summer months, but cannot do the same to bring people up to Arrifana and Monte Clerigo from Aljezur itself. Why is this? Why does Odeciexe get preferential treatment?
On my visit to Arrifana, having driven to the end of the road where the forteleza ruins are located one could easily see road pin marks as level points within the highway and several metres of fencing blocking off part of the highway.
I stopped, parked in one of perhaps only EIGHT parking spaces available for both the O Paulo Restaurant and the ruins, and went for a coffee. I asked one of the staff in the cafe what was going on and was told that work was being undertaken to alter the existing road and reduce car parking throughout Arrifana.
Clearly this will be a problem during the holiday season as thousands of people visit this place and at present parking is insufficient with cars using the rough ground to park and use the beach as well as the businesses that are operating there.
Our local Camara are aware of this but have failed to publicly inform anyone or ask for any input into the work being undertaken; this from a Camara that only recently was proudly trumpeting to the world this area as a great surfing area!
They are telling people: “Come to the Western Algarve”….but they forgot to say most of them would not be able to park.
I also notice that workmen are now “tidying-up” the parking bays on the hill outside Monte Clerigo which looks as though this, too, will result in the reduction of the number of parking spaces available, impacting on the businesses there that are almost 100 per cent reliant on tourism for their livelihoods.
I urge residents of the area to visit the Camara and demand to view the plans of the intended works so they can see for themselves just what devastation this will cause for the restaurant and bar areas and all the families that have people working in these businesses.
Having also seen the debacle at Amoreira and the time it has taken to lay a few kerbs and build a gutter system for drainage, I fear this work will still be on going next Christmas and beyond!
ENDS