A week on the Rota Vicentina's Fishermen's Trail — 107 km of clifftop paths and beach tracks from Arrifana to São Torpes, through eight fishing villages on Portugal's wild Atlantic coast. Your luggage moves between villages by van each day; you walk with a day pack. Two local guides who've walked every kilometre of this coastline run it with you, start to finish.

It's also Portugal's sweet potato capital — protected status, the same legal category as Champagne.

Check in, settle, welcome dinner in town.

Clifftop trail north, ending where the Seixe river meets the Atlantic at Odeceixe — winding streets, an old hilltop mill, and one of the most-loved beaches in Portugal below. Behind you, the Algarve. Ahead, the Alentejo.

Zambujeira arrives as whitewash and terracotta stacked above a half-moon beach. The village square is round.

If percebes are on the dinner menu, order them once.

Hours of open clifftop, the fishing platforms at Entrada da Barca, and the lighthouse at Cabo Sardão — where white storks nest on sea stacks out in the Atlantic spray, the only population on earth that does. Red dunes into Almograve for dinner.

Dunes and pine open onto the Mira estuary. Milfontes was founded in 1485 and fortified against the pirates who worked this coast for two centuries — still called the Princess of the Alentejo by people who mean it.

Our two-night base, so no bag to repack tomorrow.

Canoeing on the Mira estuary in the morning — flat water, no swell, a relief after five days of Atlantic.

Bodyboard lesson on the beach in the afternoon. Otherwise, yours.

Porto Covo — "port of the fishing net" — is whitewashed houses with blue trim on Pombal's straight grid, running down to the sea. Wine tasting with a local producer in the evening.

Technically, the trail's official start — we finish where everyone else begins. We're doing it o purpose so the Sun doesn't blind us on the way.
Ends at São Torpes beach. Farewell lunch, then the bus back to Lisbon mid-afternoon.