THE Oceanico Group is building the Vilamoura Golf and Garden Resort at the heart of one of the most established golf and marina estates in the Algarve. Oceanico recently took over the ownership of five golf courses, all set within Vilamoura, at a cost of €125 million and appointed Darren Clarke as the company’s touring pro. The championship Victoria course hosted the Portugal Masters in October for the first time and will continue to do so until October 2009.

Opened in June 2004, Oceanico Victoria was designed by Arnold Palmer and hosted the World Golf Championship in November 2005.

The course has wide fairways broken up with tricky bunkers and quite a few blind spots but boasts splendid views across open terrain, only occasionally blocked by olive and carob trees. The par-72, 6,560-metre (7,216 yards) course is adjacent to the Golf and Garden Resort and owners will have automatic membership rights there which extends to all five of the Vilamoura courses as well as two courses being  designed by Nick Faldo and Christy O’Connor Jnr at nearby Silves.

A round on a pay and play basis averages €100. Buggy hire is €50. The four other Vilamoura courses now owned by Oceanico are Old Course, Pinhal, Laguna and Millennium.

In a bold move, Oceanico director Gerry Fagan decided that although golf remains a strong selling factor, after all his company owns seven courses within 15 minutes of Vilamoura Golf and Garden Resort, in today’s competitive market picky buyers want other facilities too and his research shows that superb communal gardens and grounds are high on that list.

So he has contracted the Irish garden designer, Diarmid Gavin, who leapt to fame following his regular television programmes alongside Alan Titchmarsh and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.

Fagan says: “We are building a mix of two and three bedroom apartments and four and five-bedroom villas costing from £325,500 to around £1.68million on a mere 20 per cent of the land. The rest is up to Diarmid who has decided on a Moorish theme, complete with water gardens reminiscent of the Alhambra, tranquil courtyards with mosaic floor tiles and, as the focal point, he is taking the design of the classic wrought-iron latticed Moroccan lantern, enlarging it to villa size to build a series of pavilions where owners can walk into for a relaxing coffee or drink.

“To complement this theme we have decided all the property will be in this Arab style too. To keep the cohesive look, we are not fencing off individual gardens, although owners will have these registered on their title deeds.”

Vilamoura has improved hugely over the past few years. There is now direct link road to the motorway, and Faro airport, with its plethora of budget flights from the UK, a 15-minute drive making the resort a feasible weekend destination. The marina is full of boutiques, restaurants and bars, busy all year round.

Now that the motorway system linking Lisbon’s international airport to the historic towns of Cascais, Sintra and Obidos is complete, the region is now marketing holiday homes to buyers from Britain who are also attracted to the increasingly wide range of all-year round flights. Indeed, plans are now well under way for Oceanico’s next development, Royal Obidos Resort, to be built on a wooded spit of land jutting into the water between the Atlantic and the vast Obidos Lagoon, a 45-minute drive from Lisbon. Prices here will be from £245,000 for a two-bedroom apartment.

The championship golf course is being designed by Seve Ballesteros around which will be the homes, a condo-hotel, spa and other leisure facilities.

For more information contact the Oceanico Group on +44 (0)871 990 3388 or visit www.oceanicogroup.com

Diana Wildman

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