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| Algarve Newsletter |
Friday, 16 October |
Your Algarve Weekend
This is the first weekend that feels like autumn and behaves like late summer. Some cloud today, sun on Saturday at around 24 degrees, then a cooler, greyer Sunday. That suits what is on: a fair that has opened in Faro every October for more than four centuries, soup by the bowl in Loulé, and free music on the river in Alcoutim. Here is what we would do with it.
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The Whole Algarve
Our 1,535-page guide to visiting and living here. Get it for €14.99 |
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This weekend at a glance
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Santa Iria Fair
Largo de São Francisco, Faro, today to 25 October, free
It opened last night, so this is the first weekend: rides, dried figs and nuts by the kilo, and hot farturas until 1am tonight and tomorrow. |
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São Sopas Sebastião
Beside the Convento de Santo António, Loulé, today to Sunday, free entry
Loulé's associations each bring the soup they are known for. Take a bowl, pick a pot and sit down at the long tables. |
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Guadiana International Music Festival
Alcoutim quay, tonight from 8pm to Sunday, free
More than twenty acts on two stages by the water, with Spain on the far bank. Sunday is open mic, so bring the guitar. |
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Polly Gibbons & Algarve Jazz Orchestra
Centro de Congressos, Parchal, Lagoa, Saturday at 7pm
If you missed her in Lagos last week, this is the second chance: a big British voice in front of the region's big band. |
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Vila Nova de Cacela Monthly Market
Largo Manuel Cabanas, Vila Nova de Cacela, Sunday from 8am
The third-Sunday market in the east: fruit, plants, cheese and clothes, and a good reason for lunch by the lagoon afterwards. |
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Premium pick of the week
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Photo: GetYourGuide
Loulé: Rock Salt Mine Tour, 230 Metres Underground
Most people who shop at Loulé market have no idea there is a working salt mine under their feet. You put on a helmet, step into the original miners' lift and go down for three minutes. At the bottom are galleries wide enough for lorries, cut through rock salt laid down 230 million years ago, with walls banded in pink, grey and white.
The guided walk takes about two hours and covers the geology, the machines and how the salt is still taken out today. It stays at 23 to 24 degrees down there all year, so Sunday's cloud does not matter. From €25 a person, rated 4.8 from nearly 1,800 reviews. Not for children under six, or for anyone uneasy in enclosed spaces.
| Why we recommend it: There is nothing else like it in the Algarve, it costs less than a restaurant lunch, and it pairs perfectly with a soup at São Sopas afterwards. |
Browse All Experiences
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Hidden gem of the week
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Photo: Vitor Oliveira, CC BY-SA 2.0
Forte de Almádena: The Ruined Fort Above Boca do Rio
Between Salema and Burgau, a dirt road climbs from the beach of Boca do Rio to a clifftop 78 metres above the sea. At the top stands what is left of a fort built in 1632 to protect the tuna fishery below from corsairs: an arched gateway, a dry moat, thick walls of honey-coloured stone and the outline of a chapel.
The 1755 earthquake cracked it and the army gave it up in 1849. Nobody has charged an entrance fee since. You can walk in at any hour, stand where the cannon stood and follow the coast with your eyes all the way west towards Sagres. Go late on Saturday, when the sun is back and the stone turns gold, and take care near the edges: the railings do not go everywhere.
This is just 1 of 84 hidden gems you can explore free on Algarve Atlas. Browse the full collection
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A cultural bite
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The convent of Santa Iria on the Nabão, in Tomar. Photo: Jfilipemo, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Saint in the River
Faro's fair carries the name of a woman who never set foot in the Algarve. Iria was a young nun in Nabância, the town we now call Tomar, in the seventh century. The legend says a nobleman's son, Britaldo, fell in love with her, and so did her own tutor, the monk Remígio. She refused both. The monk took his revenge with a potion that made her belly swell, and the town drew its conclusion.
In the year 653 Britaldo had her killed as she prayed beside the river Nabão, and her body was thrown into the water. The current carried it to the Zêzere and then the Tagus, where it came to rest at the Roman town of Scalabis. Tradition says the town took her name, Sant'Iria, and became Santarém. Scholars are less sure, but nobody in Santarém is listening.
Her feast day is 20 October. Faro's autumn fair fell on the same date, so it took her name, and it was already old in 1596, when King Filipe I made it a free fair. So when you bite into a fartura on Largo de São Francisco, you owe it to a calendar and a legend from 300 kilometres north.
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Media partners: Algarve Daily News
The Whole Algarve, our 1,535-page guide to the region: get it for €14.99
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