Caddie's Role: The scene at the Victoria Golf Club on the Algarve in southern Portugal was one the Portuguese tourist board would have hoped for in mid-October.

I stood on the verdant putting green last Wednesday before the pro-am and looked back up towards the purple bougainvillea breaking the monotony of the brilliant white-washed walls beneath the clubhouse and the azure blue sky beyond and realised this was not going to be such a bad office to work in for the week.

Caddying is at its best when you do so in almost perfect weather conditions. Not only is it a pleasant working environment but more importantly the golf bag is as light as its bulky frame permits. For some unknown reason, the marginal weight of an umbrella and a couple of sets of waterproofs are way heavier than their actual weight.

So when the daily forecasts last week predicted 26 degrees with a light southerly wind and no rain the bag got emptied of excess equipment and the locker got packed to capacity.

With some 30 courses dotted along the Algarve it is very much golf central for a large proportion of the visitors to this region for the idyllic south European autumn.

With almost half the courses concentrated in the area just west of Faro it is no surprise you are surrounded by fourballs in the evening time as well as during the day on the golf course. It is obviously a traditional trip for a lot of the golf tourists that I encountered.

Through a golfing friend at home I was put in touch with the owner of the Fairways restaurant on the marina at Vilamoura which is situated beside the 19th Hole bar, to mention a few of the golf-related evening hang outs.

I was met at the airport by my "tour guide" and "nutritionist" for the week and whisked away at full Portuguese driving speed to the Fairways.

In true caddie style I made my entrance via the back door and through the kitchen with my suitcase.

There are some of us who live by the rule of if you find somewhere good to eat early in the week you should stick with it. So I dined there most nights using the front door the rest of week.

The charming owner, Julio, had an affinity with golfers in general and caddies in particular. He grew up caddying and caddied for Seve Ballesteros' uncle Ramon Sota in the Portuguese Open back in 1961.

He had caddied in a golf club outside Lisbon as a young lad and he explained to us how that club had such a high proportion of hole-in-ones relative to any other club in the world.

It was a rule that, if a member had the fortune to make a hole-in-one, the caddies would benefit by being given a bonus and a big drink.

The green-staff were in cahoots with the caddies, whereby, if a ball looked like it was going close to the hole on the blind par three, a timely kick in the direction of the flag would be followed by a load roar from the green, back slapping up on the tee and generous tipping at the end of the round as yet another hole-in-one was celebrated.

With the advent of the electric cart mysteriously the abundance of hole-in-ones has been greatly reduced in the Lisbon area.

Julio has changed careers and now is very good at making his guests feel welcome. It seems he has plenty of Irish regulars to whom he is an understanding host.

Last Friday his restaurant was taken over by a large group of Irish golfers who brought their own after-dinner entertainment to the restaurant, in the form of a banjo and fiddle.

Of course the golfing year is technically drawing to a close. It is the time of year where both players and caddies are thinking about their off-time and how they will spend it.

Those veterans amongst us remember when many caddies used to winter in the Costa del Sol where there were enough amateurs with used bank notes to keep them going for the off-season. It seemed like a pretty alternative way to spend the winter back then. Some progressive caddies even ventured further west to the emerging golf scene on the Algarve.

With next year's schedule having been released this week it gives us a chance to plan our winters. They do not include the south of Spain for the modern global caddie.

With 14 events on the "European" Tour to be staged in Asia next year there is a strong case for those of us with a yen for somewhere a little more exotic to while away the winter months by basing ourselves in south east Asia; Thailand would appear to be the modern caddies destination for off-season hibernation.

Meanwhile, as a preamble to the end of season, a week of mixing work with a reasonable amount of pleasure on the Algarve is a perfect way to prepare for real down-time.