Praia dos Três Irmãos

• 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 dos Três Irmãos is the eastern end of Alvor's great sweep of sand, named for the three rock stacks standing at the foot of its cliffs. The three brothers of the name rise where the open beach meets the cliff line, and around them tunnels and arches cut through the rock connect a chain of small coves at lower tides. Walk west and the sand simply widens into the huge open beach of Alvor; stay east and it is all stacks, caves and cliff. That mix of scenery in one place is the appeal. It suits families, low-tide explorers poking through the arches, and photographers late in the day.