- self-guided hotel-to-hotel walking, luggage transported
- wild and unspoiled coastal scenery
- charming mix of accommodation of character
- wonderful seafood
- glorious sunsets over the Atlantic
To explore a truly wild coastal landscape, choose this gentle yet spectacular walk which reveals the haunting beauty of Portugal’s south-western coastline. Here, on the little-known Costa Vicentina – Europe’s largest coastal natural park – virgin beaches backed by dunes and dramatic cliffs are washed by a restless sea. The sunsets over the Atlantic are superb, and by day the plentiful sunshine shows the colours of the landscape to best effect: the white-and-blue houses, the turquoise sea, the honey-coloured cliffs, red fishing boats, golden sands, green cliff-tops…
It's hard to beat sitting at a clifftop restaurant, listening to the lapping of the waves and watching the sun set over the Atlantic.
The pace of life here is refreshingly unhurried, and the beaches largely deserted, attracting egrets and turtles. The sleepy, whitewashed fishing villages offer a glimpse of a way of life that has remained unchanged for decades, and hide rural hotels of great charm and character, which range from luxurious ranch-style hotels to pristine townhouses. Late spring is a particularly special time, when pink thrift carpets the dunes and Europe’s only marine stork colony nests on precarious sea stacks buffeted by the waves.