Olhão, Again — A Community Experiment That Didn't Quite Take

Community is what you make of it. Which is a problem if you don’t make much.

I came back to the eastern Algarve with one simple goal: experience it in a summer month. I managed that part. Everything around it went sideways.

Let me walk you through it.

Where I was coming from

I’d arrived in the eastern Algarve earlier in the year as a fairly grumpy, socially singular-minded person. The kind of self-built bubble you live in for too long and only notice once someone politely points out you’ve been in it.

I needed a change. To my genuine surprise, a change happened. I left a few weeks later as a more open, slightly less grumpy version of myself, looking forward to whatever came next. Suspicious of my own optimism, but looking forward to it.

What the plan was

I came back with an already-edited plan. Originally I’d booked longer, then cut it short thanks to a few ideas I’d picked up on the way through Sevilla a couple of weeks earlier.

Plans don’t survive contact with me.

The idea was simple: continue where I left off. Quality community life, good workouts, a bit of work squeezed in between. Two out of three would have been fine.

Where I stayed

I stayed with Pomar Coliving again, this time at their space on the outskirts of Olhão. The original space — the one that existed before the popups around Olhão and Fuseta, and before some city council decided the property urgently needed a big road driven straight through it.

It reopened this year as a sort of beta test, to work out whether a community hub still functions once the environment changes around it.

Even with a road in front of you, it’s a lovely place to stay.

The only catch: it’s a bit far from the city centre, and you’re fugged if you’re not mobile.

And yet. The location looks like a compromise on paper, then you add up the options and it quietly tips into more pros than cons. More on that later.

What I actually did

Not much. And for once that wasn’t entirely my fault — several things lined up.

Plans change

My plans collapsed almost immediately after arrival.

I’d meant to enjoy the summer vibes for a while, then move on to Palermo to burn to a crisp in proper Italian heat. I didn’t.

So I stayed in Olhão longer instead. The escape plan, once again, escaped me.

I didn’t vibe with the community

Communities have this funny property: you click with them completely, a little, or not at all.

The smaller the community, the bigger the gamble.

This time the dice didn’t fall my way.

Don’t get me wrong — the community wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t my fit this time. There’s no villain here, only chemistry, and chemistry doesn’t take notes on whose fault it is. I’ve drawn worse hands — two rainy months of coliving in Porto set a bar this didn’t come close to — but “not bad” isn’t the same as “right”.

Location and weather

As mentioned, Pomar’s space sat a bit outside the centre, so even a trip to the nearest supermarket was a proper expedition.

Add the fantastic weather — warm to hot, sunny, a bit windy — and doing that walk regularly without air-conditioned transport became a daily negotiation with myself.

I usually lost.

Work-life balance

Back in Fuseta I’d had a proper rhythm: a nice run in the morning, a bit of exercise in the garden, relaxed talks somewhere at the villa, strolls through the nearby village, and some work squeezed in between. The kind of balance you’d put on a postcard.

I tried to carry it over to Olhão. It didn’t take.

For one, there’s no decent running route that doesn’t dump you onto the road for at least ten or fifteen minutes first. If you’re like me and want to run every day, that gets old fast. The road is hard, it’s extremely boring, and there’s no variation until you finally reach the Ria Formosa or the harbour area of Olhão.

Pomar does have a home gym, though. So I quietly traded my nice mix of conditioning, weights, and mobility back to mostly weights — exactly what I’d been doing until the start of the year. Progress, in reverse.

Weekends weren’t much better. Thanks to a fundamental disagreement over what counts as a “fun activity” — hunting waterfalls and beaches isn’t my idea of one — I spent a lot of them working, then decompressing in Fuseta in the afternoon.

Verdict

Let’s be honest: without a proper kick up the backside, I’m lazy. So when you combine middling chemistry, no transport (nobody had a car), and a sharply different set of interests, I’m not exactly volunteering for group activities.

We did do some good stuff together — dinners in Olhão and Fuseta, a pizza beach party in Faro, a bike festival concert in Fuseta. But in the end I did exactly what I came here to do the first time: work, workout, and a small, carefully rationed amount of socialising.

For that last part, Fuseta’s Nanobrew did a lot of heavy lifting. I’d got to know the crowd there last time, and it carried on being great this time too. Turns out the community I clicked with was the one I’d already found.

And coming back to Pomar itself: I think it’s undervalued.

If the community doesn’t click, there’s not much you can do about it while you’re there. Fair enough. But everything around it is yours to choose, and that’s the part I undersold.

A main street running past the front door doesn’t exactly scream monastery retreat. But it never really was one. Quieter before, sure — though not by much. The neighbourhood’s barking dogs keep you up at night far more reliably than the odd car or motorbike.

The real selling point is the location. Maybe not for the occasional sun-and-beach, Aperol-nipping big-city crowd, but for anyone after a bit of adventure. Which was my own fault, really. I ignored exactly what I already knew.

Why? Because it sits outside the centre, which makes it a perfect launch pad for cyclists, hikers, and bikers. Cyclists and bikers don’t have to carve their way out of town before the ride actually starts.

Hikers just hop in the car, drive five to ten minutes in three directions out of four, and land somewhere worth walking.

Would I come back?

The important question, isn’t it. This wasn’t the best run. So would I? Yes, absolutely. I still like this part of the Algarve a lot — the region, the charm, the people.

Same place? Yes. But differently. With a more flexible means of transport, so the next supermarket isn’t a life event.