Seventeen Kilometres of Sand

The Rota Vicentina's Fishermen's Trail has one characteristic that the photographs cannot convey, and it is this: sand.

Not beach. Path. The route runs along the top of the cliffs on what is essentially a dune, and for seventeen kilometres your foot lands and then keeps going down another three centimetres. By the afternoon your calves have opinions.

It is completely worth it. There is no road in sight for hours at a time, the cliffs are that particular Alentejo orange, and every kilometre or so there's a fisherman perched on a ledge you would not go near for money.

Milfontes appears across the Mira estuary in the evening, white and low, and you have to walk inland to the bridge to reach it, which at kilometre twenty feels personal.