Praia do Barril Trail

On Saturday, our first day in Tavira, Chris woke up with a nasty cold. We also were somewhat jet-lagged so we just took it easy and tried to get used to our surroundings. As I mentioned it is a lovely little town.

We did walk across the Roman Bridge though and had a coffee and pastry in a little cafe. Then walked around the square and through a pretty park. We bought some roasted chestnuts from a street vendor and then walked back over another bridge. We found a Pingo Doce grocery store and enjoyed trying to figure out what we wanted to stock the fridge with at the apartment. We are in Tavira for a week. Roast chicken, cheese, salami, salad stuff, wine, granola, milk, yogurt, eggs and coffee were good starters.

The rest of the day was low key as Chris struggled a bit with his cold.

But on Sunday, we were ready for a walk. We had heard about a nice trail though a salt marsh in the neighbouring town of Santa Lucia. We drove the car to the trail head and joined several others who were out walking their dogs or jogging.

The trail starts on a beach, then crosses a bridge and passes through an extensive salt marsh area to sand dunes and former fishermen’s huts, now converted into beach facilities and a restaurant/tuna museum.

Anyone who didn’t want to walk on the trail could take a little train to the beach and back. The kids really seemed to like the ride. We walked beside the tracks.

This is an interesting trail for observing water birds such as flamingoes, egrets, terns, herons, cormorants and plovers in the salt marsh and watching the fiddler crabs, particularly at low tide.

When were there, the area was really like a giant mudflat. There were areas of sea rushes and apparently the curry plant grows here.

On arriving at the huge beach, the trail divides into two: to the right, there is a protected area and to the left, there is an “anchor cemetery”.

No one knows who placed the first of the hundreds of rusted anchors along the sand dunes on this beach. But locals continued adding the gnarled weights to honor the small tuna fishing community that once flourished in the area.

The anchors were used to weigh down the nets for catching tuna. They’re lined up in rows and exist without any real pomp or officiality. Fishing in the area was a dangerous and difficult profession, but these waters, where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean, were filled with bluefin tuna. The technique for catching them was unique to the area, and was probably invented by the ancient Romans who lived in the area.

The Algarve thrived on tuna fishing for centuries, but local fisherman had to give up their occupation in the 1960s when the numbers of fish declined. Their anchors were just left on the beach to rust—until someone came up with the artistic idea of creating a cemetery for anchors.

The beach is huge. We imagine that in the summer it is packed with sun bathers but when we were there, only a few brave souls found chairs to lounge on and were soaking up the sun in the cold wind. We spent some time on the beach watching the fishermen and the big waves and then had a coffee in the old housing. We also looked at all the old photographs in the restaurant showing how the fishermen caught the tuna using a labyrinth of nets. It was fascinating.

Then the walk back to the car and home we went.Read more