WEST OF EVERYTHING

The correct approach is to take the coastal route and stop everywhere. The Algarve west of Portimao is a different landscape from the resort coast to the east: wilder, emptier, with fewer hotels and more of the raw limestone scenery that makes this coast extraordinary. The beaches are harder to reach and therefore less crowded. The villages are smaller and less oriented toward tourism.

Lagos is twenty kilometres west of Portimao and it is the most beautiful town on the Algarve coast. The old town is enclosed by medieval walls, the streets are cobbled, and the Igreja de Santo Antonio -- an eighteenth-century church covered floor to ceiling in gilded baroque woodcarving -- is one of the most extraordinary interiors in Portugal.

Have a coffee at Black and White Coffee Shop on Rua Marreiros Netto. Walk to Ponta da Piedade. Look at the sea stacks. Take the steps down to the water if the tide is out. Then get back in the car and drive west.

Sagres is at the southwestern tip of Portugal, and it has the atmosphere of a place that knows it is at the edge of something. The Fortaleza de Sagres -- a fortress built on the clifftop by Henry the Navigator in the fifteenth century, from which the Portuguese Age of Discovery was planned and launched -- is the most historically significant site in the Algarve.

The wind at Sagres is constant and strong. The cliffs are vertical and the sea below them is the colour of deep water. The light is different from the rest of the Algarve -- harder, cleaner, more northern -- because you are, in fact, at the point where the Mediterranean climate ends and the Atlantic begins.

Have lunch at one of the small restaurants in the village. Order the fish. Drive back along the coast as the sun drops. Stop at every viewpoint.