Travel Portugal: A full stop at the end of Europe

The Algarve defies comparison. Too many travellers regard the south coast of Portugal as an continuation of the Spanish costas. This is like treating Canada as an extension of the United States: tempting, understandable even, but thoroughly misleading. The Algarve has little in common with the Mediterranean shores. For a start, the sea is several shivers cooler. The people are divided from Spain by language, culture and history - and, in the 1990s, by visitor numbers.

Along the length of the coast this year, every local resident I met mourned the shortage of tourists. A reticence about visiting the south of Portugal is partly explained by some spectacularly dismal weather this spring, but the climatic glitch has subsided, and summer visitors can look forward to sunshine tempered by the west-south-westerly breeze blowing in steadily from much of the rest of the Portuguese-speaking world: Madeira, the Azores and Brazil. Significant numbers of Brazilians now either work or holiday in the Algarve, adding a slice of New World influence to the Moorish remnants in the far south-east of Europe - the closest extreme to Gatwick.

The airport: Faro, destination for hundreds of charter flights during the summer, now has Portugal's finest airport. Baggage reclaim times have improved by several hours on the days when all the bags from half-a-dozen flights attempted to share the same carousel. The main hazard these days is the number of timeshare hustlers who apprehend visitors as they leave the customs hall.

The city: if the Algarve has a capital, then it is the doddery old city of Faro - as neglected by the authorities as it is by tourists. This neglect explains its considerable charm, a dilapidated collusion of houses coaxing support from the few considerable churches. Independent travellers will be well advised to use Faro as a base: as well as some robustly cheap and cheerful places to stay, such as the Pension Madalena (pounds 10 per night, single), it is the centre of the rail and road networks for the coast.

The road: take advantage of low-cost car rental and hack back and forth along the N125, the artery of the Algarve. Shun the new Via do Infante motorway in favour of the road that links the disparate settlements between the Spanish border and the far west.

The train: better still, rely on the railway. The tracks went to seed some decades ago, but somehow a roughly regular service rattles along the coast. The full distance takes four hours and costs exactly that many pounds. When the railway runs out, at Lagos, local buses take over.

The sotavento: the leeward (sotavento being "gentle wind") stretch of coast east of Faro is overlooked by most tourists, so some fine beaches and unspoilt-ish villages extend as far as Vila Real de Santo Antonio, on the Guadiana river. This marks the border with Spain; some disloyal visitors have ventured over to the Spanish frontier town of Ayamonte and found it a model of Andalusian grace.

The barlavento: the windward shore is where everyone goes, and it has the mock-Moorish scars of timeshare developments and ill-considered hotels to prove it. Worst of the new resorts is probably Quarteira, but fortunately you can avoid the place by sticking well inland and supping with the locals in Loule, an unambitious market town six miles inland.

The resort: Albufeira has everything you might reasonably expect, from a wide, safe beach to a semblance of urban structure around which resort life unfurls - there is a genuine town square, though picturesque old gents busily gossiping have been superseded by time-share vendors.

The solution: Lagos has all the answers. The continental railway network reaches its terminus at a neat, be-tiled station on the edge of this harbour town. A brief stroll reveals a settlement that wanders off in all directions, many of them upwards. Ancient walls impeded progress and resist change. Conservatism is represented in the prim town square, but the beaches that fringe Lagos are liberally blessed with soft sand and strong waves. Arriving is much easier than leaving - and not simply because of Portuguese Railways' schedules.

The full stop: Europe ends at Cape St Vincent. If you imagine it to be a scraggy and windswept piece of rock notable mainly for its location rather than any scenic virtue, you would be entirely right.