Spatia Comporta

A standard room at Spatia Comporta runs to 42 square metres, under a high wooden ceiling, with a terrace and a garden of its own, and that is the hotel being modest. Spatia is Latin for space, and the estate spends it freely: 170 hectares of pine forest, dunes and rice fields on the Alentejo coast, with each two-bedroom villa on a hectare of its own and the four-bedroom on two. On one covered terrace, terracotta screens punched with round holes do the work of walls, and the sand comes right up to the edge. One private pool runs along a living room with a black fireplace hung from the ceiling and a sofa sunk into the floor, and The Suite has a hammock and an outdoor shower on its patio, over the olive gardens.

Recommended for families who want a villa's worth of room after the beach and do not need a kids club, because there isn't one, and for couples, who get a pool kept for adults. The children have one of their own, and guests say neither gets crowded. The sand runs 40 kilometres from Troia to Melides, and the beaches at Carvalhal and Pego are ten minutes' drive, so a car is part of the plan. Back in the pines are tennis and padel courts, with RacketsPro Academy coaching each summer.

Dinner is at ŌRA, where the seafood and meat go over charcoal, or in summer at NESTO, which turns to Asia for sushi and curries. Dogs are welcome too, which seems fair: of everyone here, they are the likeliest to use all 170 hectares.