October

By Rob

There's a version of the Algarve that most visitors never see because they're not here for it. It arrives in October.

The families have gone home. The restaurants that were fully booked in August have tables again. The beaches are still warm enough to swim from but quiet enough that you can think. The light goes golden earlier and stays that way longer, and the evenings have just enough cool in them to make a jacket feel welcome.

I find October to be the best month here by some distance. The region settles into itself. The people who are still around tend to be the ones who've chosen to be, residents, people who know the place, visitors who've been before and understand what they're coming back for.

The Ria Formosa is particularly good in October. The bird migration is in full swing and the lagoon takes on colours it doesn't have in high summer. There's a walk from Cacela Velha down to the water that I try to do at least once in autumn. The village sits on a clifftop above the lagoon with views out to the sea, and in October the light on the water in the late afternoon is genuinely difficult to describe without sounding like you're trying too hard.

I took someone there for the first time last year in late October. She'd been coming to the Algarve for summers for years and had never been to Cacela Velha, which is about fifteen minutes east of Tavira and feels about forty years behind everywhere else. We walked down to the waterfront, came back up through the village, and sat outside with a glass of wine as the sun went down.

She said it was the best afternoon she'd had in Portugal. I believed her.