Praia da Boca do Rio

• In the town ofSalemaSalema is what the western Algarve looked like before the volume went up: a small fishing village folded into a valley mouth, ending in a beach where the boats are still drawn up on the sand. It belongs to the parish of Budens in Vila do Bispo, on the quiet stretch of coast between Lagos and Sagres where planning protections have kept the building low and the coastline honest. The beach is the daily event: broad, gently shelving and Blue Flag awarded, with a short seafront where the restaurants grill fish landed a few metres away. At its eastern end, the tilted rock slabs hold something unexpected: dinosaur footprints, pressed into what was soft lagoon mud around 125 million years ago, and visible to anyone who knows to look. Beyond the village, the coastal path towards Burgau and Sagres gives cliff-top walking with barely another soul in sight for most of the year. There is no strip and no nightlife to speak of, and that is the point. Salema suits travellers who measure a place in swims, long lunches and early nights, and it rewards anyone who stays past the day-trip hours, when the village gets its beach back.

Praia da Boca do Rio, between Salema and Zavial, lies where a stream meets the sea beside the ruins of a Roman fishing settlement. The remains behind the beach belong to a Roman maritime villa and fish-salting works, one of the most studied ancient sites on this coast, and the valley around it has stayed almost entirely undeveloped. The 1755 earthquake and tsunami struck hard here, part of why the site has drawn researchers. The beach itself is a mix of dark sand and pebbles, wilder in character than its neighbours. It suits walkers, quiet-seekers and anyone with an interest in what this coast looked like two thousand years ago.