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Visit Porto Santo
🏖️ Relaxation2 days

A slow weekend of beach and wine

Town beaches · sand bath · cycle path · Adega · sunsets

At a glance

Saturday stays in town: beach early, hot sand, lunch with your feet in the sand, Lambecas and the Lombas lookout at sundown. Sunday rolls down the almost-flat cycle path to Calheta, with the island's wines before the last sunset.

Difficulty
Very easy · on foot and by bike on the flat
Best season
Bathing season 1 May – 31 October; water around 18 °C in March, 24–25 °C in high summer.

🎒 Packing list

  • Parasol or wide hat
  • Sunscreen
  • Mask and snorkel
  • Water bottle
  • Cash for the stalls

Day by day

Day 1 · The town and its beach9

📍 Fontinha → Vila Baleira → Lombas · ⏰ 08:30

  1. 09:00 → 09:30Visit

    Jump off the Cais Velho

    A monument and a place of leisure, the old pier is the beach's favourite diving board: start the day with a jump into Fontinha's water, supervised in season.

    📍 Cais Velho
  2. 09:30 → 10:45Breakon foot · 1 min

    First swim at Fontinha

    The town beach, Blue Flag since 1989 with lifeguards guaranteed from 15 May to 31 October: 720 m of turquoise water from the Cais Velho — go early, before the 11 am sun.

    📍 Praia da Fontinha
  3. 10:45 → 11:15Break

    Hot-sand bath (psammotherapy)

    The beach's calcareous sand, born of crushed shells, corals and algae, heats to 65 °C at the surface and stays around 40 °C at 10 cm: buried for twenty minutes, it releases calcium, magnesium and strontium into sweat. An island tradition — head in the shade, water within reach.

    📍 Praia do Porto Santo

    💡 Insider tip — Three therapeutic sands in the world: Porto Santo, Guarapari (Brazil) and Beppu/Ibusuki (Japan).

  4. 12:30 → 14:00Mealon foot · 15 min

    Lunch with your feet in the sand — Pé na Água

    A terrace on the beach facing the Atlantic: grilled fish of the day, garlic-butter lapas and homemade bolo do caco — the hour to leave the sand, as the Maritime Authority advises.

    💡 Insider tip — Booking recommended in July–August.

  5. 15:00 → 15:30Breakon foot · 15 min

    Lambecas ice cream

    More than fifty years of history and the archipelago's most iconic ice cream: passion fruit, banana, mango — the afternoon ritual, in the shade, at the hours when you avoid the sun.

    📍 Lambecas
  6. 15:30 → 16:00Visiton foot · 3 min

    Nossa Senhora da Piedade church

    The mother church, on the site of the island's first chapel: built between 1430 and 1446, pillaged by French corsairs in 1566, rebuilt in 1667; the Gothic Morgada chapel, a rocaille ceiling and paintings by Conrado and Römer. Its patron is celebrated on the last weekend of August.

    📍 Igreja Nossa Senhora da Piedade
  7. 16:30 → 18:00Breakon foot · 5 min

    Late afternoon at Fontinha

    Back on the town beach as the sun drops: showers, lockers and a first-aid post at hand, guaranteed surveillance in season. Everything is on foot from the centre.

    📍 Praia da Fontinha
  8. 18:30 → 19:15Photoon foot · 15 min

    Evening at Miradouro das Lombas

    Very close to the centre, a small lookout over Vila Baleira as far as the old pier, the bay and the beach, with an old wooden windmill as a landmark and a nearby restaurant of regional dishes — the evening viewpoint without a car.

    📍 Miradouro das Lombas
  9. 20:00Mealon foot · 15 min

    Grandmother's cooking — Casa d'Avó

    Recipes handed down through the generations: açorda, seafood rice, passion-fruit flan. Simple and sincere, a step from the beach — dinner from 6.30 pm.

🌧️ Rainy-day alternative — A tub sand bath at the Hotel Porto Santo geomedicine centre (medical advice), then Casa Colombo.

🎒 What to bring — Parasol or hat, sunscreen, water, towel, mask and snorkel; cash for the stalls.

  • Sun: the National Maritime Authority advises avoiding the sun between 11 am and 4 pm and drinking regularly — hence beach time early and late in the day.
  • Sand baths: the sand reaches 65 °C at the surface in summer — 20 minutes, head in the shade, water within reach; the Hotel Porto Santo geomedicine centre works under medical advice.
  • Swimming: lifeguards are guaranteed only at Fontinha, Ribeiro Salgado and Cabeço da Ponta in season; elsewhere follow the flags, and never go into the water to rescue someone — call 112.
Day 2 · The cycle path to Calheta8

📍 Ribeiro Cochino → Cabeço da Ponta → Calheta · ⏰ 08:30

  1. 09:30 → 10:00Mealby bike · 10 min

    Bolo do caco & fruit — Ribeiro Cochino stalls

    In summer the stalls in the Ribeiro Cochino car parks sell bolo do caco, grapes, watermelon and figs: the beach snack before the cycle path that starts here.

    📍 Praia do Porto Santo
  2. 10:00 → 10:30Visit

    Cycle path Ribeiro Cochino → Calheta

    4,565 m of red resin, almost flat, beside the ER 111, opened in 2004, beach on one side and dunes on the other — Cabeço da Ponta, then Calheta at the end. City, mountain or electric bikes hired in town.

    📍 Praia do Porto Santo
  3. 10:30 → 12:00Breakby bike · 5 min

    Cabeço da Ponta, Blue Flag

    4 km from the centre in the south-western hotel zone: turquoise water, lifeguards, a rescue boat and a first-aid post from 15 May to 31 October. No public car park — arrive by the cycle path.

    📍 Praia do Porto Santo
  4. 12:45 → 14:15Mealby bike · 10 min

    Grilled lapas at Calheta

    The restaurant on Praia da Calheta is known for grilled lapas served with garlic-butter bolo do caco, facing Ilhéu da Cal and its lime galleries.

    📍 Praia da Calheta (Porto Santo)

    💡 Insider tip — Lapas outside the closed season (1 Dec – 31 Mar).

  5. 15:30 → 17:00Breakon foot · 2 min

    Calheta, rocks and Ilhéu da Cal

    The end of the 9 km, quieter than the centre: sand and rocks, and across the water the lime galleries cut into Ilhéu da Cal. Changing rooms and toilets on site; no guaranteed lifeguards, so swim with care.

    📍 Praia da Calheta (Porto Santo)
  6. 17:30 → 18:00Photoby bike · 15 min

    Miradouro das Flores, the 9 km at a glance

    South-west coast, past the Centro Hípico: the whole beach, Ilhéu de Baixo, Ilhéu de Ferro and Ilhéu de Cima and, weather permitting, the Desertas and Madeira; the contrast of golden sand and turquoise is strongest in the late afternoon. Bust of the painter Francisco Maya.

    📍 Miradouro das Flores
  7. 18:15 → 19:15Mealby bike · 10 min

    Island wines — Adega das Levadas

    Home cooking and Porto Santo wines: Listrão, the "queen of the white grapes", and Caracol, grown on calcareous sand behind croché dry-stone walls — a tasting before the nearby Calheta sunset.

    💡 Insider tip — Late August: Festa das Vindimas, public press and tastings in the town centre.

  8. 19:15 → 20:00Photoby bike · 5 min

    Sunset at Calheta

    For the tourist board, THE Porto Santo photo: the sun drops behind Ilhéu da Cal (179 m) and, on clear days, Madeira's outline shows on the horizon. Terminus of the SIGA "Centro – Calheta" bus.

    📍 Praia da Calheta (Porto Santo)

🌧️ Rainy-day alternative — A tub sand bath at the Hotel Porto Santo geomedicine centre (medical advice), then Casa Colombo.

🎒 What to bring — Parasol or hat, sunscreen, water, towel, mask and snorkel; cash for the stalls.

  • ER 111 cycle path: 4,565 m of red resin, almost flat, from Ribeiro Cochino to Praia da Calheta; city, mountain and electric bikes for hire in town.
  • Cash: the bolo do caco and fruit stalls in the Ribeiro Cochino car parks don't always take cards.
  • Swimming: lifeguards are guaranteed only at Fontinha, Ribeiro Salgado and Cabeço da Ponta in season; elsewhere follow the flags, and never go into the water to rescue someone — call 112.
  • For the tourist board, the one photo to bring home is the Calheta sunset: arrive half an hour early, with Ilhéu da Cal in silhouette across the water.
  • SIGA bus "Centro – Calheta" (running since July 2024): timetables change with the season — check the operator's page below.

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