Ponta de Piedade - Our Walk on the Cliff

Chris finally is on the mend and we had a decent sleep. Yay!

Fernando, our host, suggested a great walk on a boardwalk on top of the seaside cliffs just to the west of Lagos. The boardwalk was fairly new and led to a group of rock formations forming yellow-golden cliffs around 20 meters high. Almost every Portugal brochure has a photo of these beautiful caves, grottos and sea arches and we were excited to see them.

We drove to the Belmar resort, picked up Donna, then on to a little parking spot where the boardwalk started. It was a glorious day and the views of the ocean and the cliffs were something else. As we walked, we found it easy to step off the boardwalk onto old trails that went close to the edge of the cliffs. There were several danger signs that mentioned the instability of the sand cliffs and we had to be careful that we didn’t go too close. It was a steep drop to the ocean!

After walking about 2 km, we got to the little Lagos lighthouse and saw a set of stairs with 192 steps that would take us to the sea level. Down, down, down we went, into an amazing eroded ‘hole’, Ponte de Piedade. The rock formation and the water rushing in and out of smaller holes on the sides of the hole made for an exciting and noisy walk.

Hundreds of birds live in little holes on the sides of the cliffs and it looked like they were preparing their nests - flying in and out. When we got close enough to identify the birds, we realized that they were pigeons, maybe rock pigeons?

We had heard that the best way to appreciate the beauty of Ponta de Piedade is from the sea. We couldn’t imagine that anything could more beautiful than the walk on the cliffs. But now that we were at sea level, we were curious and an opportunity (that I will talk about in the next footprint) presented itself.Read more