After university, I’d been interning at the European Parliament in Luxembourg, but the Eurocrat life wasn't for me. I wanted to be a journalist, preferably somewhere in sunny southern Europe. So one evening over a drink my friend Paul Ames and I decided to write to English language newspapers in Spain and Portugal offering our services. I had never been to either country.

The sole reply came from Paul Luckman, publisher of Algarve News and Magazine (now The Portugal News). He needed reporters, he said. Why not come for a month's trial?

Within days I had touched down in this strange land of dazzling sun, craggy coves, and pork with clams for lunch. The editor Jane kindly showed us the ropes, then told us she was leaving to have a baby and wasn’t planning to return.

Paul Luckman called us into his office. “Paul, I want you to edit the magazine”, he said, “and Peter, I want you to edit the newspaper.” After barely a month in the Algarve, we had inherited a mini publishing empire. Mind you, at that point, we were the entire editorial team.

I had very little idea of how to edit a newspaper, let alone a newspaper in Portugal, but I knew what I liked. Back in Britain, the Independent newspaper had recently launched and was a model of clean, elegant design. I showed a copy to our designers João and Filipe. “Can you make it look something like this?”

Just down the cobbled street was the office of a shaggy-bearded Ulsterman who freelanced for the paper. When I knocked he was hunched over his manual typewriter, a bottle of SuperBock on the desk. “Len Port”, he announced, “As in port wine.”

“Leave a space for the lead story every fortnight”, Len went on. “I’ll fill it.”

Scoop after scoop

He was as good as his word. Over the next 18 months, we ran scoop after scoop on fugitives from justice, timeshare scams, mysterious deaths, and missing charity funds. Looking back, I’m not sure how great an advert it was for the Algarve, although to his credit our publisher – a passionate advocate for the region – never complained.

The glossy sister magazine, featuring the work of the talented Algarvian photographer (and excellent translator) Nuno Campos, was however a showcase. We ploughed the length and breadth of the coast in a battered Renault 4, researching features from Sagres to Olhão, Alferce to Alcoutim, and meeting traditional blacksmiths, cataplana makers, and octopus fishermen along the way. I remember punctures on rocky mountain roads, and seeing too many accidents on the EN125.

Credits: Supplied Image;

We interviewed the former boxer Henry Cooper who was golfing at Penina, the Wimbledon star Roger Taylor who ran the tennis academy at Vale de Lobo, and the Portuguese football legend Eusebio who was visiting Lagos. As a journalistic exercise, I was persuaded to enter the Portuguese Open squash championships at Carvoeiro, and somehow got a single point off the number one seed.

On press days, we invariably worked into the night to put the paper and magazine to bed. The company was an early adopter of digital publishing technology. The problem was it didn’t always work, so sometimes we had to revert to pasting up pages on the wall. Once, I overdid the glue and by the time the maquette reached Lisbon for printing all its pages had stuck together. Back to the drawing board.

Challenges

Learning Portuguese was a challenge too. I had a Portuguese girlfriend, Cristina, who also worked at the paper, but she had grown up speaking French, so although my French improved, my Portuguese in fast-talking Algarve lagged behind.

Until one day not long before I left, the gas at our flat in Praia da Rocha was cut off because the previous tenant hadn’t paid his bill. During a frustrating exchange in Portuguese at the gas office I exploded: “But I am not José Manuel Vasconcelos da Silva!”

“You’re not?” replied the gas man. I could have hugged him.

My most poignant memory was the story of Harry Heaps, an RAF pilot whose Wellington bomber crashed at Cabo de São Vicente during World War II. He contacted us to say he was planning a visit to thank the local people who had rescued him and his crew.

It was a wonderful story, and official plans were made to celebrate the trip, but sadly Harry died just a few days before he was due to travel. On a bleak, windy day near Sagres, the British honorary consul unveiled a memorial stone. I hope it’s still there.

BBC

Soon after that, I applied for a job as a trainee at the BBC in London. When I arrived for the interview, I handed the panel copies of Algarve News. “How much of this did you write?” they asked. “Most of it”, I replied, and I was in.

My time in the Algarve was over, but I still look back on it with huge fondness and gratitude. And a lifelong love for this wonderful region.

Why am I telling you all this now? Because recently I encountered a curious coincidence. My son Luke, now in his 20s, invited his girlfriend’s parents for lunch. Hannah’s father, the former British ambassador to Portugal, Chris Sainty, had just been named chief executive of The Portugal News. As I reminisced about Algarve News in the 1980s, Chris asked if I would write a piece. With pleasure!

Peter Barron lives in Spain’s Extremadura, close to the Portuguese border, and still visits his friend Paul Ames, who lives in Tavira.