Islands in the Atlantic strangely like home

DevelopmentintheAzoresThe Azores have our climate and lush green fields - but this mid-Atlantic archipelago is also exotically different. Emma Cullinanwrites about holiday homes there. Below, Joan Scalesfinds out what it offers tourists

AS THE world wrestles with ways of making electricity from natural resources, the Azores island of Sao Miguel obtains nearly 50 per cent of its electricity from a powerful supplier - volcanic heat. Evidence of this agitated subterranean force erupts all over the lush island, from steaming lakes, bubbling sands and boiling pools of water which send up dancing aquajets. It is also written into the landscape with its dormant craters plunging into lakes at their centres and triangular shaped hills.

This landscape is blanketed in greenery, including things that we are used to seeing only in gardens - azaleas and hydrangeas are everywhere - while gardens host plants that we consider exotic: bird of paradise flowers peep over many a garden wall.

This lushness is not all that this island - and the other eight that make up the Azores archipelago - share with Ireland. It also gets four seasons in a day, just like the west of Ireland which is not surprising as they are both on the Atlantic: the difference is that the Azores are right in the middle of the ocean, almost halfway between its parent country of Portugal, and America.

While the plane that does the two-and-half hour hop from Lisbon to Sao Miguel is usually packed with chatty locals who all seem to know each other, the Azores are little known further afield. Yet because European and Portuguese money flows into the island this "undiscovered" place has a very good infrastructure. Those hydrangeas that line the roadside are beautifully clipped and the roads themselves are sparsely populated smooth surfaces.

The island even has two beautifully kept golf courses which were recently bought by Oceanico, a Portuguese-based property and golf resort company run by Gerard Fagan, from Drogheda, and Simon Burgess from Cheshire, England.

Fagan spent more than 25 years working for the Campbell Bewley Group in Ireland before hooking up with Simon Burgess, a quantity surveyor who had been working on medium-sized developments in the north of England.

The two met in Portugal, a favourite holiday spot for both, and took control of Oceanico Developments in 2000. Since then they have built a number of holiday homes and resorts in the Algarve and recently bought five Vilamoura golf courses in the Algarve; this has resulted in the company having the largest portfolio of golf courses in Europe, according to Oceanico.

The Vilamoura courses will have further Irish connections now that Darren Clarke has been made touring professional at Vilamoura and Diarmuid Gavin has been charged with landscaping the gardens.

Oceanico has bought two golf courses on the Azores - and plans to expand that to four, to offer players some variety. Two of the courses are on San Miguel and others are planned for Faial and one other island, yet to be announced.

One of the courses is to the north of Sao Miguel's main town of Ponta Delgada, which means narrow point. Here the island is just four km across and by climbing a nearby hill (by car or on foot) you can see both coasts.

The Batalha course has wonderful views over the north coast. This has been renamed the Azalea course by Oceanico and the plant certainly crops up everywhere along the fairways.

The company is putting its largest investment into this golf course for now. At the moment the 27-hole course - designed as a series of three loops - centres on a 1980s clubhouse which will be refurbished.

The new development will include 210 apartments, 10 luxury villas and a condominium spa hotel with 100 rooms and neighbouring apartments, plus conference centre, pool and tennis courts. Prices will range from around €325,000 to over €1 million.

The apartments and villas are in a contemporary, modern design with links to the vernacular. "The traditional aspects include lots of stone and white plaster on the façade and the colours will be taken from the sea and landscape," says Rui Mateus, architect and master planner of the scheme. While the shapes of buildings will be uniform, the balance of materials will differ to create interest.

The resort aspires to eco status and will be built using recycled natural materials, such as stone and timber, and will be naturally ventilated and use thermal and solar power.

The villas are being positioned in a way that will shelter the resort from breezes: this will be achieved by their relationionship to each other as well as the way in which they will sit into the landscape. The buildings will also curve through trees, in order to preserve as much of the existing planting as possible.

Stunning sea views will be maximised through the use of copious quantities of glass in these homes.

The luxury villas will include garages with doors at each end: one facing the golf course, to receive a buggy, and the other facing the road to be accessible to cars.

Rather than spreading out over the whole site the apartments and villas will be placed in key areas. There will be a central hub - with the hotel, spa, club house and apartments - and then further homes on outer reaches, with the luxury villas (and pools) sited at the top of the course with views down to the ocean.

A tree-lined driveway will lead visitors to the clubhouse and hotel where a piazza will create a strong central focus in the resort.

The second golf course on this island, just over half an hour's drive from the first, will have its clubhouse upgraded but will remain free of apartments and villas for now. Known as The Cedars, this offers wide fairways running between copses.

It is near to a hotel where you can dine on stew cooked in the ground using volcanic heat. A number of hotels and restaurants put stew into the ground at around 5am and draw it out for lunch at 12.30. Picnickers are welcome to use spare hot holes: or perhaps they would work well for warming croissants for brunch beside the nearby warm lake.

This extraordinary nature-blessed archipelago - positioned on the American plate - would make a perfect half-way meeting point for Irish peopleand their American-based relatives.

Flying direct to place over the volcano

Joan Scales

The title of the Emerald Isle may long have been held by Ireland, but there are other islands that deserve the title more - the Azores, where the grass is so green and velvet-like and the stone walls and hedgerows perfect.

Nine emerald drops, formed from volcanic eruptions thousands of years ago, lie 800 kilometres south-west of Portugal, who planted them in the 1400s, when the islands had begun to grow fertile and lush. The islands had never been inhabited. Bit by bit, volcanic ash and lava was eroded by the winds and rains of the Atlantic until after aeons, life began to form, taking away the greyness.

Microclimates developed around the hot springs and waterfalls began to form. Birds on their long journeys made it a stopping point and probably brought seeds with them, which took root and began the greening of the islands.

Sailors on their long exploratory journeys to find the New World stopped in search of fresh water and carried back tales of these deserted green oases in the mid-Atlantic.

The great explorers, the Portuguese, realised the significance of the islands and began to inhabit them and bring with them methods of agriculture and crops from the new and old worlds.

They also brought their architecture and adapted the local materials, so there are lots of lovely white churches and houses with black volcanic stone decorations.

The Azoreans are a hardy bunch of people: at various times through their 600-year history they have had to switch and change crops as diseases and fashions wrought havoc with their existence. Oranges were the great saviour in the 1800s, when thousands of crates were exported each year from the green fields and hills. Wheat, tobacco, whales, all have come and gone.

Nowadays pineapples are the main crop; more than a million are exported from the island of Sao Miguel every year. They taste delicious and are rated to be the best quality pineapples. Not surprisingly they take 20 months to grow in greenhouses and then make their way mostly to the European market. Dairy farming is another major activity on the islands and the rolling fields are dotted with black and white cows. Cheeses from the islands are delicious.

Many years ago my brother-in-law traveled to the Azores with Eamon de Buitlear to make a programme about the birds and wildlife of the Azores. It was the most exotic place anyone had ever been. He told stories of climbing volcanoes and going out whaling and eating whale blubber and brought back scrimshaw reminders of his journey.

Today there is no catching of whales: instead you can see them in their natural habitat, along with dolphins. Life in the Azores now revolves around agriculture and tourism and this year the islands will be accessible directly from Ireland when direct air services begin on May 4th until the end of September, with Sunway and Atlantic Holidays.

Climate in the Azores is similar to ours; it's a temperate one, with no huge variances between winter and summer. Temperatures in summer reach a comfortable mid-twenties and in winter rarely dip below 10, though judging by the green-ness it gets quite wet.

The flight to Sao Miguel is around three and half hours on their national carrier SATA, a comfortable full-service carrier who still treat their passengers to free drinks and nice meals with cutlery.

During the summer, life in the islands revolves around various festivals, with each island having a whole variety of festivities. Most are religious based, as the Azorean are very devout Catholics.

During Lent, young men make a pilgrimage over a week or eight days around the island of Sao Miguel to all the churches. They wear grey capes and colourful shawls and on the journey cover more than 300 kilometres.

Activities in the Azores include walking and hiking, admiring the flora, visiting gardens and wide range of watersports. In summer, the islands are full of the scent of ginger lilies; hydrangeas grow wild in the hedgerows. There are day trips available to bathe in the many thermal baths, see the tea plantation or visit Terceira island.

In Furnas you can watch lunch being lifted from the ground where it has been cooked by volcanic heat and eat it at the Terra Nostra Hotel right beside the lovely gardens. You can also see water boiling out of the ground at Furnas and taste water from natural springs.

And of course there's golf on Oceanico's two recently-purchased courses in Sao Miguel.

For evening entertainment,Tanda's Bar in Ponta Delgada has a great Cape Verdean Band and stays open late.

HOW TO GET THERE

Sunway Holidays and Atlantic Holidays will be operating a weekly flight from Dublin on Fridays, from May 4th to September 21st. Packages from Sunway begin at €588 per person sharing in a three-star hotel and €768 in a four-star hotel. Without accommodation, the flight will cost from €368. You can also fly from Dublin to Lisbon with Aer Lingus or TAP (the Portuguese airline linked with SATA) and then on from there with SATA.

Further information from 01-2886828, www.sunway.ie; www.azores.com; www.sata.pt; wwwflytap.co; www.aerlingus.com

Buying in the Azores

Properties at the Azalea resort will cost between €2,500 and €3,000 per sq m (€232 to €278 per sq ft). Two-bed apartments, measuring about 130sq m (1,399sq ft), will cost from around €325,000 to €390,000. Three-bed apartments of around 180sq m (1,937sq ft) will cost from about €450,000 to €540,000. Large four-bedroom villas, of around 400sq m (4,305sq ft), will be about €1 million to €1.2 million

Phase one starts this September and it is expected that the first apartments will be ready in early 2009 with the hotel being finished that summer.

www.oceanicogroup.com