There has been some indication of this over the last few months, but I did feel a sense of shock and loss when I visited earlier in October and saw the changes for myself.

The beach bars stretched from the well known Badala Bar at the south of Kololi, with its FREE Friday evening live music night and serving as it did many customers to the Bijilo Forest Park, to Barry's Bar more recently face lifted and renamed the Solar just behind The Badala Hotel in Kotu.

There will be as many returning tourists grieving their demise as there will be new tourists who will wonder what all the fuss is about and even more who will not even realise the massive change.

The Gambia's tourist industry has marketed its self as The Smiling Coast of Africa for years and there are moves to relaunch the Gambia's image as a sophisticated holiday destination to attract new richer tourists whose financial contribution is so needed by this tiny ex British colony.

The do-it-yourself beach bars, many with no proper running water and no electricity certainly did not fit this image, there were suggestions that they were the haunt of the beach bumsters, (Young unemployed men who through charm and persistent persuasion attempt to part tourists from some of their money) drug dealers and vagrants.

Badala Beach Bar - Gone - Bijilo Forest Park behind

The job of the newly recruited TDA (Tourist Development Area) police will certainly be made easier by their removal and in general I think many of the hotel based tourists will enjoy the beach more without the constant interruption from hopeful touts.

What of the beach bar operators and their genuine staff? They are the unfortunate casualties of progress, it is difficult to imagine that their enterprise will be curbed for long and I suspect they will reappear in some new guise to provide their very unique and colourful aspect of The Gambia.