Praia do Alvor Poente

• In the town ofAlvorAlvor manages a rare Algarve trick: it is both a proper working fishing village and one of the region's best-loved beach bases, and neither side crowds the other out. The old town climbs back from the harbour in whitewashed lanes, past the parish church with its carved Manueline doorway, to terrace restaurants where the fish on your plate came off a boat you can see from your table. Below, the Ria de Alvor estuary spreads out towards the west: a protected lagoon of sandbanks, salt marsh and wading birds, crossed by the wooden boardwalks that have become Alvor's signature walk. Follow them and you land on Praia de Alvor, a wide arc of sand running east towards the ochre rock stacks of Três Irmãos. Families get space and calmer water; walkers get the dunes and the estuary light. Evenings centre on the strip along the harbour, where the seafood houses and small bars fill from spring to late autumn. Portimão is ten minutes away when you want a city's shops or a marina, and Lagos is twenty in the other direction, but Alvor's point is that most days you will not bother with either.

Praia do Alvor Poente is the western half of Alvor's beach, running to the mouth of the Ria de Alvor, backed by dunes and long boardwalks. The wooden boardwalks that thread through the dunes and along the edge of the estuary have become an attraction in themselves, a level circuit with the ria's birdlife on one side and open beach on the other. The sand is broad and flat, and towards the river mouth the beach meets the channel where the estuary drains, an area to treat with respect for its currents. It suits walkers and birdwatchers on the boardwalks, and families on the wide sand short of the river mouth.