Welcome to the latest edition of Naturest’s newsletter.

Following an inspection visit and the signing of a protocol agreement, Naturest is now recognised by FPN as a naturist place to stay in Portugal.

In Portugal, the 25^th April is a public holiday, Freedom Day, to mark the bloodless 1974 Carnation Revolution. We joined in the celebrations with some guests and visited an official naturist beach, Adegas, near Odeceixe. A fresh wind on the cliff tops and all the way down the stairway to the beach did not bode well, but much of the beach was sheltered from the wind and bathed in brilliant sunshine. For most of the afternoon we had the beach to ourselves and were able to create a cricket pitch for an impromptu match. In the spirit of Naturest, we used driftwood for the stumps and a bat. Good fun was had by all. Marnie, who would have preferred to just lay in the sun, achieved the highest innings, declaring at 22!

 “Howzat!”

Although it was early in the year, the sea was calm enough, (but not warm enough for everyone,) to take a dip following such an exhausting match.

The day out concluded with a visit to Odemira, where the holiday celebrations were continuing throughout the evening. A concert of Fado music was enjoyed by everyone.

When it comes to serving food and drink to our guests, we try to source our ingredients as locally as possible. So, naturally we only serve Portuguese wine or beer with meals.

Choosing our house wines was difficult - there are so many Alentejano wines and many more other Portuguese wines on the market! We bought several different varieties to taste, but it was some guests in the summer of 2006 who mentioned Borba wine which they had tried at a local restaurant. We tried it and liked it, so we adopted the “Adega Cooperativa” brand as our house wine. It is available as a red or white and come from vineyards around the town of Borba, which is in the Upper Alentejo to the north east of Naturest, close to the border with Spain.

As for beer, well we plumped for a popular brand which seemed to take up a fair amount of shelf space in the supermarkets. Then, in April this year, another guest introduced us to a different brand, Cintra, which is brewed only from natural ingredients with no added chemicals. We tried it and liked the flavour and have since adopted it as the preferred beer to offer guests. Cintra is available in three varieties, lager/pilsner, brown and black, although we currently only offer the pilsner and black varieties.

As you can see, the opinions of our guests are very important to us and whenever possible we act upon their suggestions.

Not quite how Hitchcock portrayed it, but we too have been having a problem with birds. Only two birds, but they are very persistent! A pair of swallows has been trying to build a nest against a beam under our veranda. Each morning we are having to scrape off the mud foundations of their nest before they build too much.

We would love them to nest nearby, but the mess associated with birds to’ing and fro‘ing is not really conducive to guests having breakfast or just relaxing under the veranda. Last year, before we opened, we discovered the beginnings of a nest over the ventilation grille from a guest shower room. We also had to put a stop to that building activity, otherwise we would have had to close the bedroom and disappoint some guests. Thankfully that pair did not continue with their quest to nest on our home. This year’s pair, who may well be the same pair as last year, are proving more difficult to discourage from nesting in inappropriate places. We have now had to leave a scarecrow under the veranda, since the noise of wind chimes had not been successful.

 “Not a very scary effigy, but it seems to work!”