Algarve Coastal Route

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Faro

   Faro is the capital of the Algarve and the southern end of Portugal's long road, though the people who land here usually head straight for the beaches. The town sits on a lagoon, the Ria Formosa, a protected area of sandbanks, salt marshes and channels that shelters flamingos, spoonbills and a very rich shoreline. Boats run out to the barrier islands, where long empty beaches face the open Atlantic. The old town, inside a medieval wall, has narrow cobbled streets, a cathedral built partly on the site of a mosque, and a pleasant marina.

   Read the complete Faro write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Faro is where the day begins. Next is Albufeira.

2. 2. Albufeira

   Albufeira is the loud one on the Algarve. It was a small fishing town until tourism came in the twentieth century and filled the slopes above its beach with white blocks of apartments and bars, and a few decades later it is one of the biggest holiday towns on the coast. The name comes from the Arabic for something like the sea castle, a reminder that the Moors ruled this shore for centuries before the Portuguese took it in the thirteenth century.

   Read the complete Albufeira write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Albufeira comes up about 46 km into the recorded legs. Next is Carvoeiro.

3. 3. Carvoeiro

   Carvoeiro is a village folded into a small cove, with a pocket-sized beach at the bottom, a cluster of white houses climbing the cliffs on each side, and a small square above it. It began as a fishing community, and you can still see boats pulled up on the sand beside the sunbathers. The name seems to come from the word for charcoal, and the old story is that it was a place where coal was loaded; this is a plausible local explanation rather than a certainty.

   Read the complete Carvoeiro write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 80 km into the recorded legs you reach Carvoeiro. Next is Lagos.

4. 4. Lagos

   Lagos is an Algarve town with a past that is both glorious and uncomfortable. It was from this harbour in the fifteenth century that many of Prince Henry the Navigator's caravels set out down the African coast, and in 1434 Gil Eanes sailed from here to round Cape Bojador, a step that opened the sea route south. The same port saw, in 1444, the arrival of the first cargo of enslaved Africans brought to Portugal, and the old arcade where they were sold still stands on a small square, now a museum that tries to tell the story honestly. It is worth the time.

   Read the complete Lagos write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Lagos, late in the day. Next is Sagres.

5. 5. Sagres

   Sagres is where Portugal runs out of land. The village sits on a bare, wind-scoured promontory at the south-western tip of Europe, and a few kilometres away the lighthouse at Cabo de São Vicente stands on cliffs about seventy-five metres above the Atlantic. The ancient world believed this was the end of the earth, and the Romans called the cape the Sacred Promontory. The sea here is deep blue and often rough, and the light has a clarity that comes only with a long fetch of open ocean.

   Read the complete Sagres write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Finish at Sagres. That is the ride.