Riding the coastal roads of Portugal’s Algarve beaches

                            

Riding the coastal roads of Portugal’s Algarve beaches In a beat-up, run-down dump of a 

• Togluulagch 11 player

hatchback, rented from a shifty out-of-town car hire company, me and my Mallory Knox rolled down the windows and cranked up the Captain Beefheart as we headed west from a forgotten Faro backstreet to the furthest southwesterly crag of Portugal’s Algarve region. We forewent the fever of the toll roads and trailed smoke-choking tractors down pockmarked lanes. That’s the freedom that freewheeling affords: we could second-guess a route that roughly rambled between the area’s show-stopping selection of honeycomb beaches. We drove at dawn to have the limestone fins of Praia de Marinha to ourselves, only to be beaten by a barefooted sun lounger seller. We even abandoned the car upon wild-looking cliff tops and scanned for safe passages down to the sands below. Like Bonnie and Clyde we skirted the state line between sea and civilisation until we ran out of road and were stopped by the dramatic booming abyss of the Atlantic at Cabo de São Vicente.