Andrew Oxlade: My experience of Maddie's resort in Praia de Luz, the Algarve

09 May 2007 1:32 PM

My experience of Maddie's resort in Praia de Luz, the Algarve

I need to break from the usual financial slant of posts on this blog. I'm sure you'll understand as I thing's it's important to give my views on this...

My family and I returned last week relaxed from a holiday at the sleepy end of Portugal’s Algarve. We were, however, stunned to wake on Friday morning, days after we returned, to hear news that a girl, three-year-old Madeleine McCann, had gone missing from the same complex, yards from where we stayed.

We picked the Ocean Club resort in Praia de Luz, a quiet village, because of its connections with Mark Warner Holidays. The company has a growing reputation among families for offering comprehensive childcare wrapped in packages with free sports activities, such as tennis and water sports. The balance of a family holiday with time to relax away from the kids is attractive to millions of Britons.

We had a great time, able to spend time together as a family while also having some time out. Sam, our two-year-old son, was well looked after while we lounged by the pool, or why I played tennis or sailed. My wife Andrea and I even made nightly jaunts to local restaurants, a rare treat for new parents.

Luz, as the locals call it, is a laid back resort with a mix of Portugese holidaymakers and locals and, in off-peak May, a smaller number of foreign tourists. A handful of restaurants and bars in the town have a balance of mainly British families and friendly locals. This is an area you would not associate with crime, let alone the abduction of a child.

The Ocean Club has several hubs. One is a 24-hour reception, the other two have swimming pools, restaurants and tennis courts. At their furthest point, these centres are 10 minutes walk apart. In between are Ocean Club apartments mixed with local homes.

The options for childcare were numerous, well organised and of a very high standard. A well-staffed nursery with a child-to-carer ratio that was often just two-to-one, took youngsters from 9.30 to 12.30 every day and from 2.30 to 5.30 in the afternoon.

These creche facilities were next to the poolside Tapas restaurant where Madeleine’s parents were eating when she disappeared.

Madeleine and the younger twins Amelie and Sean were sleeping at the McCanns’ apartment overlooking the swimming pool at the main hub of the resort. Around that pool was the Tapas bar which was in high demand every night. Most guests went to the buffet at the Ocean Club’s Millennium restaurant, a 10-minute walk away from the McCanns’ apartment. But eager guests would queue from 9am to book one of the limited number of tables at the Tapas bar, which served barbecued fish and meat dishes to order. Both restaurants were included in the price of the holiday.

The McCanns’ choice to leave their children at the flat and make regular checks is surprising given the alternatives. In their defence, they may have been expecting, as advertised in Mark Warner brochures, a ‘listening service’. Staff told us that the service had been discontinued because the apartments were too spread out. The resort, however, offered a baby-sitting service for 15 euros (£10) an hour, which was staffed by a member of the daytime nursery teams, or a ‘dining out club’. This involved parents dropping off children at the crèche where they would be supervised watching videos until they went to sleep. Parents would then return before 11.30 to scoop up their sleepy offspring.

I can imagine the McCanns’ dilemma. The ‘dining out club’ was more than a five-minute walk from where the McCanns stayed along cobbled streets or a winding pedestrian path through the apartments. It’s not far - it worked brilliantly for us on most nights - but it would have felt much further if you had to ferry thee children there and back (and hope they were still asleep after doing so). Plus parents were required to wait until children under two, which includes the McCanns’ twins, were asleep. We talked to parents who said this was enough to put them off the option.

The McCanns opted instead to eat 40-50m from their apartment, not much more than a pool’s width away. They hoped it would be just close enough to hear a crying baby but with bar music playing and restaurant hubbub, it wasn’t close enough to hear what happened to Madeleine that night.

I can't imagine what they're going through now. I, along with millions others, only hope they can find her soon and safe.

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

https://blogs.thisismoney.co.uk/2007/05/my_experience_o.html

I've just come across this again from the deep distant past.

Worth another read and I'm now adding the few comments from the blog - the most interesting factor being of course the particular time this was written.

Comments

I just return from Luz and found it spooky and uneasy. I run each morning and felt very uncomfortable running alone along the beach side cliff top areas and in the empty early morning streets. I lived in New York for five years and ran solo every morning and it never felt uneasy like I did in the streets of Luz at sunrise. Spain's proximity is not the issue it's the massive cliff tops completely fence or barricade free that make Luz feel like the end of the earth. I did not let my nine year old daughter out of my sight.

Posted by: Sonia | April 26, 2012 at 11:52 AM
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CAN ANYONE TELL ME IF THERE'S A MARINA NEARBY WHERE THE MC CANN'S WERE STAYING. THANKS

Posted by: catherine mc elhatton | May 12, 2009 at 04:02 PM
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Very nice site!

Posted by: John528 | March 22, 2009 at 05:27 PM
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Andrew Oxdale's post is one of the most sensible posts I have read relating to the Madeleine McCann case. I like how he detailed the baby sitting services which were available.

Andrew states "The McCanns’ choice to leave their children at the flat and make regular checks is surprising given the alternatives." I think "more than surprising" Andrew, I think despicable describes it better.

Andrew also mentions the parents had to wait until children under two were asleep. The McCann twins were under two. All the more reason for a personal babysitter. For goodness sake, these parents were both doctors. What were they thinking about? They had to be earning good salaries.

From the latest 48 hours TV documentary, one of the investigators reported the McCanns were still at the dining room table at 12:30 am with the wine flowing the whole evening.

Whatever way you look at this Andrew, the McCanns should have found a babysitter, and never left their children sleeping alone. This is the only crime I personally feel they are guilty of. I don't think they harmed their daughter Maddy in any way.

Of course, I am a Senior, and I was abroad for a good few years, travelling to many foreign countries, with my children, and I never left them alone. Parents just can't and shouldn't leave their children alone in their own home town, let alone a foreign country. Not in today's world.

I enjoyed you very well written post, Andrew.
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Posted by: Ella Cochrane | November 22, 2007 at 10:36 PM

I have not read or heard anyone point out that from Praia da Luz you can be in Spain in under two hours on the N125, I say this because it might help people to realise the problems the police must have had from the moment they heard of this terrible event

Posted by: Ronald Dunn | May 12, 2007 at 02:18 PM