THE TELEGRAPH
“Despite our almost Olympian levels of happy indolence we did manage some activity, and to leave Trancoso a few times. One evening my eldest son and I went riding, the half-blood Arab horses a long way from the normal holiday nag, and happily galloped along the beach, as the sun went down and the waves turned to phosphorus.
We also made an outing to Espelho Beach – a must – about six miles south, protected by a reef and, on a fine day (which, sadly, we did not have), absolutely flat and “mirror” like, from whence comes its name. We had a fishy lunch in the colourful mangrove shack of a longtime resident, Silvia Calazans, who has a fund of stories about Trancoso in its decadent Seventies pomp.”