Tavira and the east: tidal islands, salt pans, and a slower Algarve

Cross the Faro line heading east and the Algarve changes register. The cliffs flatten into a lagoon coast — the Ria Formosa, a 60-kilometre maze of channels, salt marsh and sandbar islands that shelters the calmest, warmest water in the region. The crowds thin. The towns slow down. Tavira, straddling the Gilão river on a seven-arched bridge with Roman foundations, is the loveliest of them and somehow still under-visited.

There's no headline 'sight' here, which is the point. You come to Tavira to do very little extremely well: cross the bridge for an evening drink, count the tiled church facades, take the ferry to a beach that runs for miles.

Tavira's beach isn't in Tavira. It's on Ilha de Tavira, a barrier island you reach by a short ferry from the town or from Quatro Águas — which is exactly why it never feels full. A timber boardwalk crosses the dunes to a beach that simply keeps going: warm, shallow, Atlantic-clean. Walk ten minutes from the ferry landing and you'll find your own stretch.

Further east, the islands off Cabanas and Cacela Velha are even quieter. Cacela Velha itself — a single whitewashed street, a church, a fort, and a view over the lagoon — is the kind of place you stumble on and never quite stop thinking about.

The east coast still works its salt pans by hand, raking flor de sal off the lagoon the way it's been done for centuries. In autumn the pans fill with flamingos. The salt ends up on your plate that same week.

Eat what the lagoon and the tuna boats bring in: clams cooked à bulhão pato with garlic and coriander, grilled tuna steak still pink in the middle, octopus salad dressed simply. Tavira's market and the small restaurants around it take this seriously and charge a fraction of what the central resorts do.