Our First Two Days at a Worldschooling Hub in the Algarve

After a week of glamping outside Doñana and a bus ride across the border, we arrived in the Algarve for the part of the trip I was most curious about: two weeks at a worldschooling hub called Naturally Richer. I found it through a worldschooling group on Facebook. The setup is what sold me. Families can come any time, for any length of time, and the activities are family events that parents join too, with no dropping the kids off.

What is a worldschooling hub?

A worldschooling hub is a home base where traveling families gather in one place for a while, so the kids (and the parents) get a community on the road. Naturally Richer has run hubs in Slovakia, Sardinia, and Portugal, and this is the third season of the Portugal hub. It runs from early October through the end of May, and families can come for a week or stay for months.

The hub doesn't provide housing. You book your own apartment, house, or campsite nearby, register with your dates, and pay a community contribution. That gets you into the group chat, where meetups and events are posted: beach days, hikes, pizza and movie nights, and separate meetups for moms and dads. Bigger outings like boat trips, surf lessons, horse riding, and dolphin watching are organized for the group, and each family pays for those directly.

Where we stayed: Galé and Salgados, outside Albufeira

The Algarve is Portugal's southern coast, known for its beaches, cliffs, and mild weather well into the fall. Albufeira is one of its busiest resort towns, with an old town and a nightlife strip that fill up in summer. The hub is based in Salgados, just west of Albufeira near the village of Galé, about a 10-minute drive from the center of town but much quieter. It's mostly low-rise apartments and villas, a golf course, and a long beach, with a few cafés and restaurants along it.

Sunday: Arriving at Herdade dos Salgados

We rented our car from Ready2Drive, and they were the easiest car rental company we've dealt with. They met us at the bus station to hand over the car and later picked it up from us at the train station. One person handled everything just for us, did the paperwork on the car, and we were off.

Our apartment was a modern, well-stocked two-bedroom in Herdade dos Salgados. The complex has 12 large apartment blocks and six swimming pools, and it's a short walk from Praia da Galé. Most of the other hub families were staying there too, which made things easy, though you don't have to stay there to join.

It's shoulder season and the weather is perfect. Days are still in the 70s and 80s and good for swimming, and nights drop into the 60s, so morning coffee outside feels pleasantly cool. Even better, there are no crowds anywhere.

Once we'd settled in, we went to the pool and met our first few hub families. Right away we were meeting people from all over the world, with kids of all ages. Remi made a friend straight away and was thrilled to be invited to her birthday party, which was happening by the pool later that week.

It was fun getting to know people and hearing their stories. Families were there for all kinds of reasons: short trips like ours, full-time expats, long-term travel, gap years, and scouting for a future move. Most were doing some form of worldschooling or homeschooling, usually outside their home country. Some, like us, were taking a break from traditional school, and the hub's flexibility worked for all of us.

Monday: A candy hunt, AlgarveShopping, and sunset on Praia da Galé

On Monday we joined more hub activities and met more people, including our host, Katarina. She'd organized a candy hunt for the kids and had been up since 7 a.m. hiding treats in the small olive trees all around the property. After a briefing on the rules, the kids scattered, and they were so happy to start searching. (Under her rules, all the candy came back to the middle to be shared out evenly.) Meanwhile the parents kept getting to know each other, since many of us had only just arrived.

After plenty of candy and more time in the pool, we went shopping at the AlgarveShopping mall. It has a great play area shaped like a bird, with big wooden climbing structures leading up to a tall slide. The mall was nice. We browsed H&M and bought Remi new shoes at a sports store.

We also stopped at Continente, which as far as we can tell is Portugal's version of Walmart. We picked up a booster seat for Remi (we'd found a car seat to borrow for Arlo), plus food, school supplies, toothpaste, and everything else we were missing. After more than enough shopping for all of us, we cooked dinner at the apartment and checked the group chat for the next hub activity.

We ended the day at a sunset beach meetup with the group, and it was the perfect introduction to the Algarve. Praia da Galé is amazing: a long, wide beach with perfect fine sand and a few little cafés and restaurants, including the one that became our local, O Luis. The kids climbed rocks, dug, swam, played soccer, and ran around. The grown-ups chatted about travel and kids, found common ground, and made plans for the weeks and months ahead.

Then a family leaving the next day put on some music and started a dance party, and kids and adults loved it. It felt like a great start to our time at the hub, which we booked thinking we'd be ready for some more socializing after four weeks of travel, and it feels right.