Season 1 in Portugal – we did it!

To say it’s been a busy season is kind of an understatement. But I figured rather than give in to the temptation to immediately start thinking about next season, now’s a good time to pause and look back. (We’re pretty good at promoting those moments of reflection for our guests - which doesn’t leave us much time for practicing what we preach...)

It is almost exactly ten years ago this week that Sofie & I spent a month or so free camping in our van at the beaches of the western Algarve near the start of our round-the-world surf trip which kinda morphed into Soul & Surf accidentally.  So, setting up a Soul & Surf in Portugal was something we’d been quietly mulling for some time. While we were busy putting down roots over in the tropics, there was something about the Portuguese landscape that kept calling us back. Miles of rugged cliffs, a coastline littered with both beach and point breaks, feasting on pastel del nata after morning surfs. There’s something magical, wild & rugged about this corner of Europe, which is why it soon became a regular destination for our pop-ups. 

Three years of those pop-ups under our belts, and we figured it was time to make things more permanent. We announced our plan to open in the Algarve about this time last year...and then had that ‘oh shit’ moment of realising we actually had to do it. 

Sofie & I have always been hands-on, sleeves rolled up setting up Soul & Surf’s before, but this time we simply couldn’t do it for geographic, logistic and educational reasons. So while Sofie and I did our trademark juggling act between keeping an eye on things in the jungle, and popping back when we could to check in, the brilliant Dan, Adam and Jade spent their winter building, gardening, tracking down suppliers, negotiating with local authorities and accountants, hiring a team... The list goes on. We were taking bookings throughout the winter - scarily slowly if we’re honest -  all the while having barely anywhere to put our guests, let alone minor things like a decent yoga shala, therapies space or a full team in place! 

I won’t try and list all of the slightly hairy moments we had but safe to say there have been a few. (Having our head cook drop out approximately ten days before launch was a bit of a scary one...although serendipitous because we seriously lucked out with Rachel, who joined us at the eleventh hour and has helped create and deliver an amazing menu along our Sunshine Food ethos.)

Before we knew it April was upon us, Sofie, Kit & I zipped back from Sri Lanka and ‘soft launched’ with a group of friends. We then had to go back to the UK and send Kit to his new school in Brighton and those bookings became real life humans who wanted to come and stay with us. Week after week, more people arrived and before long, thanks to some kind words in the Guardian, we were busy - really busy. A good problem to have that’s for sure, though our bookings team could barely keep on top of enquiries, our team on the ground were doing a few jobs each and pulling some crazy hours, and we couldn’t hire quickly enough. Yikes.