Albufeira, Algarve
Praia dos Arrifes
The smallest of the three, with two rock towers standing in the shallows
Arrifes is the one people mean when they say "the secret beach". It is small — genuinely small, a pocket of sand hemmed in by cliffs — with two sandstone towers sitting in the water in front of it that make every photograph look staged.
Because it is small, it feels full quickly. Twenty people is a busy day. That is the trade: it is the prettiest of the three and the one you are most likely to arrive at and find no room.
- Parking
- An unpaved clearing in the pine woods above the cliff, room for roughly a dozen cars. In August it is gone by ten in the morning.
- Getting down to the sand
- Wooden steps down from the car park. There are not many of them — the cliff is low here compared with the coves either side.
- What's there
- A seafood restaurant above the beach (A Sardinha), toilets, showers, and about ten sunbeds, with lifeguards in summer. Blue Flag.
- Without a car
- Route 75 again, and again infrequent. It is four kilometres from the centre of Albufeira — ten minutes by road, well over an hour on foot, and the walk is not a pleasant one.
- When to go
- Early, or accept you may be turning round. Mobile signal is poor here, so if you taxi out, book the return before you lose it.