Walking in the Algarve - A Walker's Guidebook

Guidebook to walking 34 full- and half-day walks in Portugal's beautiful Algarve. The rich range of scenery from volcanic hills to dramatic limestone escarpments and beautiful coastline, together with a diversity of flowers and wildlife, and an equable climate, makes the Algarve an ideal walking destination.

The Algarve is covered by 14 sheets in the Carta Geografico do Portugal 1:50,000 series published in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These maps unfortunately do not include the enormous changes that have occurred since then. Besides the large-scale developments along the coast many new roads have been created, especially since Portugal joined the EC. Some roads are completely new and cut across the countryside; others follow old paths and tracks that have been upgraded to drivable roads – none of these changes are on the maps. Similarly some paths and tracks that feature on these maps have disappeared altogether from a combination of disuse and encroaching vegetation.

The Algarve is also covered by 39 sheets of the 1:25,000 maps of Portugal produced by the Instituto Geografico do Exercito (www.igeoe.pt), Av. Dr. Alfredo Bensaude, 1849 – 014 Lisbon, telephone: +351 218 505 300, fax: +351 218 532 119. They cannot be bought in the Algarve, but are available in the UK through Stanfords (stanfords.co.uk). However, the series is not updated or revised on a regular basis, and some maps are very out of date.