Another Day in the Algarve
Be Careful Where You Stand
It's been raining for weeks, months, years it seems. I am sick of the rain. I am fed up with grey skies. I am depressed by the way it gets dark at three o'clock in november. It isn't so much the cold I dont like, although that is a problem (why be cold when you can be warm?) but it is the dreary look of England for half the year.
So here I am in the deep south of Europe, looking for somewhere bright and warm.
"Let's go and look at the sea," someone said. So we walked up this steep hill to the promenade.
"Hold on. Why is the sea up a hill?" asked someone else.
"You're in Portugal now." I looked up, but my companion sounded serious.
We climbed to the top of the hill, and there below us was the sea. We climbed down and paddled in the cold water.
It was a rather nice beach. Close to the Spanish border they are the usual flat sandy variety extending for kilometers as far as the eye can see. Gentle Atlantic rollers splash delicately onto endless sand. Over on the western coast things are somewhat different. The coastline is rugged, and great chunks of rock slope down to the crashing waves. At Cape St. Vincent the rocks drop sheer into the sea boiling below. But in between the beaches are magical.
The real Algarvean beaches are those that stretch from Albufeira to Lagos, where they slot in behind great turrets of rock cut off from the land by a hungry sea. The rock is soft, and the sea gnaws great chunks away, leaving the harder chunks to stand like sentinels a few hundred yards off the mainland. Here is a small bay which the sea has eaten out of the rocks. The sand is perfect. The cliffs are steep, and the bay is sheltered, barely a couple of hundred yards across, sometimes inaccessible except by goat or boat. Sometimes there is a small road and a single beach shack providing meals in an idyllic setting.
Here you can order your meal, and then jump over the balcony and rummage among the rock pools until a shout calls you back, and you reach up for a glass of iced Sangria, and, glass in hand, you paddle in the sea, your lunch being prepared fifty yards away.
Further west you ramble over a headland. On the edge of a sheer drop are fisherman casting their lines into the sea a hundred meters below. In a restaurant in the next bay this evening you can eat their catch.
On another headland you come upon a deserted building site. Further on is a ruin, then a lighthouse, and although you are 200 yards inland you nearly fall into the sea. Just a few feet and a couple of crumbling rocks in front of you is a great hole. You peer down and can just see the sea rush in, swirl around at the bottom, and slither out again. The waves have gnawed a tunnel under the rock over the centuries, and the roof of the tunnel has fallen in and been washed away, and now there is a blow hole two hundred meters inland ready to catch unwary walkers.
Further west at Portimao there is Praia da Rocha: the beach of rocks; where, at the western end of a long wide sandy beach, is a promontory of rocks with a tunnel, where you can duck under to another beach scattered with more rock sentinels left standing amongst the sand by the retreating sea. This is the beach in all the classic photographs. It is a beach that, the first time you see it, takes your breath away. It is a beach to sit on, with your back against a rock, and dream. It is the place to have your picnic on a long summer's evening. It is a beach to sit on and watch the moon setting into the Atlantic.
On tuesday I drove my car to the rocks above the beach at Praia da Rocha to watch the sunset. The sun disappeared over the hills behind Lagos, and the clouds slowly started to glow in the pale blue sky. Two days later the place where I had parked was no longer there. In its place was a jagged chasm where the rock had collapsed and the sandy headland had tumbled to the beach below.
These beaches can be scary as well as magical.
Further west at Alvor is a secret beach. Actually it is a set of beaches which you have to show a little cunning to reach. It's easy by sea of course, but by land you have a few obstacles. First, the steps are only available when the gates are open (during the summer season), or if you choose to climb over a fence to reach them. Alternatively you can wait till the tide starts to recede and then wade through the retreating waters to a rickety set of steps placed dangerously against the rocks. This takes you through a short gully, to another set of steps, this time leading down to more retreating sea. But beyond is a small bay with a bar to your left (abandoned during the winter months). Beyond that, through a tunnel in the rocks, is another bay, even smaller. Wander under yet another tunnel and you come to a further bay littered with rocks and rock-pools. It is out of the wind, it is quiet, it is a magical place to spend an idle afternoon and finish the day with a picnic or a barbecue.
On the headland beyond Lagos the rocks are scattered off the coast in fascinating formations. Beneath you the water is working away to make some more. Be careful where you stand.
