Arrábida Natural Park: a coastal paradise just outside Lisbon

Chances are you haven't heard of Arrábida Natural Park – but you may have seen it on screen. It was to this coastal park in Portugal that George Lazenby's James Bond travels after his wedding in the 1969 film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". Celebrity endorsements don't get much more glamorous than that, says Richard Mellor in The Times – and nor are they always so well deserved.

The park's forested hills are as verdant and its seas as sparkling today as in the movie, and though Bond's trip there turns sour when his new bride – Diana Rigg's Tracy – is shot dead by Blofeld's henchwoman on a coast road, such mishaps are rare. It's peculiar, then, that Arrábida and its beautiful beaches receive relatively few foreign visitors.

The park stretches along the south coast of the Setúbal Peninsula, where the vast Sado Estuary meets the ocean, roughly 45 minutes' drive south of central Lisbon. It encompasses nearly 70 square miles of land and sea, but there are very few hotels within its bounds.

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I stayed at Casa Palmela, a whitewashed 17th century manor house with 21 "airy" bedrooms, five larger apartments, a "simple" wellness centre, and a good restaurant serving local cuisine with "kitchen-garden produce". Its 75-acre estate, fragrant with rosemary and orange blossom, is a joy to explore by bicycle or on foot, and its concierge can arrange guided days out including horse riding, snorkelling, wine tasting, and boat trips to see the estuary's bottlenose dolphins – one of Europe's few resident pods.

There are vast beaches suitable for surfing on the peninsula's west coast, but those in the park itself are protected coves, good for swimming, with white sand and "aquamarine" waters that "recall the tropics". (Be warned, however: the Atlantic is chilly at these latitudes.)

And there are plenty of cultural attractions nearby, including medieval castles and the city of Setúbal, which has a lively covered market and an exquisite chapel in the Manueline (late gothic) style.

hotelcasapalmela.pt