Portugal’s Fishermen’s Trail reveals the Algarve’s wild side

The fluorescent green gaiters seemed a ridiculous suggestion, but proved a godsend as we plodded across a wide, crescent-shaped, honeyed beach. The sun was high and slivers of light flickered through a thick sea fog while 6ft waves crashed and fizzed, their white foam licking the towering limestone cliffs.

I was hiking part of the Rota Vicentina, or Fishermen’s Trail, a 140-mile trek from Lagos to São Torpes in Alentejo, a path once carved by fishers and now part of a 466-mile hiking and cycling network. Our official starting point was 25 minutes away in Salema, a fishing village set within the Vicentine Coast natural park.

Visitors drifted in and out like the tide, pottering along cobbled streets past blue-and-white fishers’ cottages and stopping for fresh seafood on terraces overlooking the long, empty beach flanked by chalky cliffs.

Portugal, Algarve

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