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Water, Water, not everywhere
It is raining so I am writing. Jim made a spreadsheet of our water bills yesterday and we talked about what we could do to reduce our consumption, which includes encouraging people who visit to use less water. Tavira Verde is switching off our second water meter on April 10. From June 1st through to the end of September we cannot use house water for the garden and we will potentially have no garden water as our bore hole is dry. Tavira Verde – website – Drought message Tavira MC has a limited statement about climate change on its website. It needs to be updated to reflect the drought situation.…
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Mobility plan – consultation document
I am working my way through the 98 page Mobility Plan for Tavira. I have already sent in a response before the deadline of 21st March. But now because the deadline was extended after the protest outside the Camara I plan to rework my response into something much more coherent and considered. Jim and I translated the document with the help of DeepL and Google. The image charts are not translated but fairly easily understood in terms of objectives. Here is the link to the English translation of the mobility plan for Tavira. Clicking the link will open the PDF file. It is a large file 6MB even after reducing,…
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Drought, World Water Day and Saharan dust
On World Water Day, 22 March, the Municipality of Tavira sent out details of a new awareness and information campaign entitled “Water is Life, but it can End.“ I was puzzled at first because this theme is taken from the Lakota phrase “Mní wičhóni” “Water is Life” which was the protest anthem from Standing Rock. It also has a spiritual meaning rooted in Indigenous world views. “For Native Americans, water does not only sustain life, it is sacred.” The campaign is launched as the Algarve is being hit by Saharan sand, which will continue until next Monday. Everywhere is covered in brown mucky dust. So don’t wash your car or…
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Protest in Tavira – Mobility plan
About 60 citizens and residents turned up at 9:00 a.m. this morning, March 21st, outside the Tavira Council house to register their concerns about the mobility plan. If you have not already looked at the plan, today would have been the final day of the very short eight-day consultation period. During the protest, two people made an appointment with the mayor’s office to ask for an extension of the short consultation period. The group sang a protest song to the tune of Grândola. It seems that the protest was organized very quickly through word of mouth in response to the very short consultation period. Some good news! After the protest,…
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Are the community gardens in Tavira under threat? – Voicing your concerns
I was contacted by the association ACTIVE ECOTOPIA to translate documents and help spread the message about a possible threat to the Community Gardens in Tavira. Jim and I were part of the protest a few years ago to save the historic Agricultural Centre in Tavira where the Community Gardens are now flourishing.I have translated the document from Portuguese into English with the help of DeepL and added some native English sense. Coming from a large city in England we know what traffic congestion really means and why it is important to maintain as much green space and promote public transport and not cater just to cars by creating new…
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Cachopo, the windmill, wild flowers, the earthstar and the stones
Some days I just want to bottle moments of joy. That not being possible, on International Women’s Day 2024, I decided to start recording the events of a magical day from earlier in the week. Four women had a mission, an electric car, which I drove and the sun on our backs. You could call our mission one of spirit – that is we wanted to find ancient stones. We are women who meet together to meditate and create art. We feel connected to each other and the earth, so for me our exploration was about deepening our relationship with nature. But also the opportunity for a “jolly out” together.…
