Arrábida Natural Park: a coastal paradise just outside Lisbon

The park stretches along the south coast of the Setúbal Peninsula in Portugal

Arrábida Natural Park on the Setúbal Peninsula in Portugal
(Image credit: Americo Lopes / Shutterstock)

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.

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