Casa Mae

Casa Mãe began as an abandoned estate in Lagos, and it has not entirely given up farming. The nineteenth-century house stands above its own vegetable garden, and two hundred chickens see to the eggs. Inside, it has been filled with vintage furniture from all over Portugal. Christian Kraus and Véronique Polaert designed the hotel, which opened in 2016, and set its rooms around the kitchen garden and a triangular pool, with the old town walls alongside. Few vegetable patches are so well defended.

We had a Standard room for six nights at the end of March, in the newest building. It is twenty-four square metres with a floor of handmade terracotta, sun-dried in the Algarve, and floor-to-ceiling glass onto a terrace with a hammock over the street. The bathroom is open, with a rain shower, and best shared with someone you keep no secrets from. Basic but stylish, and for two adults without children it was fine: with the courtyard to come back to and Lagos outside, the room never had to be the point.

The courtyard is the reason to book. Birds of paradise grow all round it, their orange crests standing up out of the leaves, and we had cocktails there, surrounded by them. For a hotel of this standard and quality, we thought it a one-off in Lagos. Orta, the restaurant, cooks from the garden and the hens, healthy breakfasts in the morning and the charcoal barbecue at night. The vegetables have come a short way. The service, when we ate there, took rather longer.

The old town starts at the door, and by the hotel's account it has kept its fishermen and its markets. The sand at Meia Praia is ten or fifteen minutes' walk, depending on who is counting, and the walk back makes the case for the spa circuit: an eleven-metre outdoor pool of salt water rather than chlorine, a sauna and a steam room, taken four guests at a time for two hours.

Children are welcome, though nothing here is built around them: there is no kids' club and no children's pool. Villa Paiol, a house on its own, sleeps six, and the hotel arranges surf lessons for over-sixes. Further out, the Costa Vicentina is the coast at its biggest and wildest, kept that way, and left to the surfers and the fishermen.