Praia do Burgau

• In the town ofBurgauBurgau is a small fishing village folded into the cliffs between Praia da Luz and Salema, in the municipality of Vila do Bispo. The Parque Natural do Sudoeste Alentejano e Costa Vicentina begins here, which is why the coast west of the village stays wild and the building has stayed low. The village is often compared to a Cornish fishing port, and the comparison holds: narrow streets drop steeply to the sea, there is no seafront road, and the tarmac simply runs out at the sand, where fishing boats are still hauled up above the tideline. The beach sits between two headlands, sheltered enough for swimming on most summer days, and the clifftop path out of the village gives proper walking in both directions, east towards Rocha Negra above Luz and west towards Salema and eventually Sagres. There are a handful of restaurants and bars, a couple of small shops, and not much else, which is the point. Nights are quiet and mornings smell of the sea. Burgau suits people who want the western Algarve at village scale: a swim, a grilled fish lunch, a cliff walk and an early night.

Praia do Burgau lies below an old fishing village between Luz and Salema, at the point where the Algarve's protected south-west coast begins. The village streets run straight down to the sand, steep and whitewashed, and boats are still drawn up on the beach as they have been for generations. Burgau marks the edge of the Costa Vicentina protected area, so the coast running west from here stays largely undeveloped. Cliffs frame both ends of the compact bay and the water is generally calm. It suits families, and anyone who wants a beach where the village and the fishing clearly came first.