Azenhas do Mar

White houses cling to the cliff face in tiers, terracotta roofs catching late-afternoon light as the Atlantic churns against the rocks below. Below the village a seawater pool set into the rock fills with each swell, the water shifting from foam-white to deep blue. The salt air carries the faint sweetness of pastry from the bakeries above.

Azenhas do Mar is a tiny cliffside settlement on the Sintra coast, around thirty kilometres north-west of Lisbon, named for the water mills — azenhas — that once worked the stream where it meets the sea. Its signature is the ocean pool at the cliff base, filled by Atlantic tides and overlooked by the stacked white facades, with the beach and pool best treated as a summer, calm-sea pleasure and the viewpoint across the village magnificent in any season. The Sintra-Cascais Natural Park surrounds it, so the village sits exactly where wild coastline meets the palaces and gardens of Sintra a short drive inland — ornate royal excess and a cliff-face fishing village in the same afternoon. Clifftop restaurants serve spider crab, percebes and grilled fish with nothing but ocean below. It is a place for a long lunch and a slow golden hour rather than a packed itinerary, and is better for it.