Praia de Benagil: getting there, parking, and the clifftop above the cave

By car. From the A22 take the Lagoa or Porches exit and follow signs to Benagil. The last kilometre narrows to a single lane with passing places and drops steeply into the village. In August this is slow, and the car park at the bottom is small.

Parking. There is a paid car park above the beach and a small amount of roadside space that goes first. If you arrive after nine in high season, park higher up and walk down rather than trying to turn at the bottom.

By bus. The coast road is served; the village itself barely is. Getting to Benagil by public transport means a bus to Lagoa or Carvoeiro and a taxi from there.

Not at all. This is the option most people should take. Almost no boat trips leave from Benagil. If your plan is to see the cave, you are going to a marina in Portimão, Albufeira, Lagos or Armacão de Pêra, all of which have proper parking and none of which involve that road.

From the car park a track climbs east along the top of the cliff. It is not signposted well, it is not paved, and it is the best thing here that costs nothing.

About twenty minutes along you reach the point where the collapsed roof of Algar de Benagil opens at your feet. There is a rope in places and a warning sign. Both are ignored daily by people leaning over for a photograph, above rock that is undercut by the sea from below — which is precisely why the roof fell in.

Looking down through the hole you see the sand, the water and the boats turning inside. It is a genuinely strange view and completely different from the one you get from a boat.

The path continues east as the Seven Hanging Valleys trail, past Praia da Marinha and on towards Albandeira. Guided walks run the whole route in about three hours.

Praia da Marinha. Ten minutes east on foot along the clifftop, or a short drive. Two rock arches standing in the water and a cove that turns pale green at midday. It is on most lists of the best beaches in Portugal and it is where the boat trips anchor.

Praia do Carvalho. Five minutes west, reached through a tunnel cut into the rock. Small, sheltered, and far quieter than either of its neighbours.

Praia da Albandeira. Fifteen minutes east, with its own arch offshore and a fraction of the crowd.

If Benagil village is full — and in August it will be — any of these is a better afternoon.

Benagil itself takes an hour. The cove is small, there are two or three restaurants above it, and once you have walked the clifftop and looked down through the hole there is not a great deal else in the village.

What makes it a day is the coast either side. West, twenty minutes on foot brings you to Praia do Carvalho, reached through a tunnel cut in the rock, and beyond that the eroded shelf of Algar Seco above Carvoeiro — pillars, windows and blowholes, with a staircase down and no ticket.

East, the Seven Hanging Valleys trail runs along the clifftop to Praia da Marinha in about forty minutes, past two more coves and the collapsed roof of another cave. Marinha is the beach with the two arches standing in the water, and it has a proper car park of its own.

Do the boat trip in the morning from a marina, drive to Benagil for lunch, walk the clifftop east in the afternoon, and swim at Marinha. That is the version of this day that works, and it never involves queuing for the village car park at nine in the morning.