Raposeira

On the plateau between the Serra de Monchique and the Atlantic, the village of Raposeira keeps a low profile along the old EN 125: whitewashed houses, some with doorways carved in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in the middle of the western Algarve’s wildest coast. This was one of the places where Henry the Navigator kept a residence while he directed the Portuguese discoveries from nearby Sagres.

The prince and the chapel

The Infante’s presence here is recorded in his own letters, and tradition marks out an old house of the village as the Paços do Infante. A short drive away stands the Ermida de Nossa Senhora de Guadalupe, a medieval chapel usually dated to the thirteenth century and classified as a national monument, which the navigator attended and which survived the earthquake of 1755. In the village, the sixteenth-century parish church keeps fine Manueline portals.

Down to the quiet coast

South of the village the land falls to the shell-shaped cove of Ingrina and the longer sands of Zavial, inside the protected coast of the southwest Alentejo and Vicentine Coast natural park. The clear water of the coves draws swimmers and paddlers, and the old battery above Zavial remembers the days when this coast needed defending. Walkers reach the beaches from the village on marked routes of the Via Algarviana network, and the coast continues west towards Sagres and its Fortaleza de Sagres.

What to see

• The 15th- and 16th-century doorways of the village houses
• The Ermida de Nossa Senhora de Guadalupe, a national monument
• The cove of Praia da Ingrina and the sands of Praia do Zavial
• The marked walking routes of the Via Algarviana

Practical information

Raposeira lies in the municipality of Vila do Bispo, in the far west of the Algarve, on the road between Lagos and Sagres. The beaches are a few kilometres south. Winds can be strong on this exposed coast: bring a windproof layer, and check the official websites before setting out.

Image credit: Praia do Zavial – Portugal by Vitor Oliveira — CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.