Why Autumn Is the Best Time to Walk the Fishermen’s Trail

There's a stretch of coastline on the Fishermen's Trail - somewhere between Carrapateira and Vila do Bispo - where a wooden trail sign at Praia do Telheiro is, for reasons nobody has ever fully explained to me, permanently covered in snails. I've walked past it more times than I can count, always at a slightly different angle of afternoon light, and it still makes me smile. That's the kind of detail you only pick up by actually being out there, season after season. And it's why, when people ask me the best time to walk the Trilho dos Pescadores, I don't give the obvious answer.

Most guides will tell you to come in spring or summer. I'd tell you to look seriously at autumn - and not just because the crowds thin out.

September and October give you two things at once that rarely line up quite so neatly: some of the most comfortable walking weather of the entire year, and the single best window to see one of the natural spectacles of this coastline - the autumn raptor migration through Sagres. 

Come with me through what the season actually looks like, month by month and section by section, so you can plan around it rather than hope for the best.

Autumn on the Trail: What Actually Changes, Month to Month

The trail runs south from Porto Covo to Lagos, and autumn arrives on it in the same direction - the northern, Alentejo half of the route cools and wets up noticeably faster than the Algarve half to the south. That's not a minor detail; it should genuinely shape how you plan your walk.

September is, in my view, the best single month to be out here. On the Alentejo coast around Porto Covo and Vila Nova de Milfontes, September still feels like late summer, but without the intensity of July and August - daytime temperatures generally sit in the low-to-mid 20s, rain is still relatively limited, and the sea is around its annual warmest. 

Further south around Sagres and Lagos, it's warmer again, with rain still a rarity. September also marks the start of the autumn migration spectacle around Sagres, so if wildlife interests you as much as walking, this is when the southern end of the trail starts to get genuinely interesting - more on that below.

October is where the two halves of the trail start to diverge. In the north, temperatures ease and rain becomes more of a feature, with average rainfall roughly doubling compared to September. In the south, October holds on to summer longer - Lagos and the Algarve stretch still see comfortable daytime highs, with the sea staying relatively mild. 

October is also when Sagres becomes a magnet for birdwatchers: the annual Sagres Birdwatching & Nature Activities Festival runs here each year in early October (2–5 October for the 2026 edition - Birdwatchingsagres.com), landing right in the middle of peak migration.

November is genuinely the shoulder season. Rain becomes considerably more frequent on the Alentejo coast - by a wide margin the wettest month of the year up there - and the combination of wet ground, stronger winds and shorter days makes it a less predictable month for a long coastal walk. It's still walkable - many of my favourite trail days have been bright, blustery November mornings - but pack for it properly, and don't expect swimming in the sea to be part of your plans up here.

The practical upshot: if your trip window is flexible, September edges out October for the most reliable combination of warmth and walking conditions, while October gives you the strongest wildlife interest of the three. If you're set on a specific month, use the trail's geography to your advantage rather than treating it as a hard rule - earlier in autumn generally favours the northern section, while the Algarve tends to hold warmer, drier conditions later.

The Birds: Why September–October Is Sagres' Secret Season

Here's the part most trail guides miss entirely. The Fishermen's Trail runs for more than 200 kilometres through the Southwest Alentejo and Vicentine Coast region, including the Natural Park that shares its name (Natural.pt) - a stretch of coast that sits at the meeting point of the North African, European and Mediterranean bioregions. Every autumn, that makes it one of Europe's great raptor migration corridors. Sagres, at the southern end of the route, is one of Europe's standout vantage points for it.

The geography is the trick: Sagres is a southwestern bottleneck, so birds heading south towards Africa get funnelled around the peninsula rather than spread evenly across the landscape. That's why a relatively small area can produce such an extraordinary variety of sightings in autumn. 

It's not a minor curiosity, either - the Rota Vicentina Association runs a dedicated birdwatching programme out of Sagres for exactly this reason, and September to October is the window they recommend, because it's when the concentration of birds passing through peaks. 

On a good day, a single vantage point near Sagres can produce sightings of more than 100 species. Short-toed eagles, Bonelli's eagles, black kites, Egyptian vultures, Montagu's harriers, black storks, griffon vultures, and the odd Eleonora's falcon or imperial eagle all pass along this stretch on their way south for winter.

And the white storks around Cabo Sardão, further north on the Alentejo coast, are worth pausing on too - not migrants, these, but residents, and unusual ones. This is regarded as the world's last population of white storks nesting directly on sea cliffs rather than in trees or on buildings.

You don't need to detour off the trail for any of this. Just walking the southern stages into Sagres in September or October, eyes up, is enough to catch it.

Can You Still Swim?

Yes - but where matters more than when. The character of the coastline itself, before you even get to temperature, decides this. Along the central and northern stretches of the trail, you're mostly on open, exposed Atlantic coast with real surf and strong currents; it's a magnet for surfers precisely because it isn't gentle swimming water, and our team treats it that way when walking it. There are sheltered exceptions - river-mouth beaches like Furnas near Milfontes or Amoreira near Aljezur offer calmer water even on this stretch - but once you turn east from Sagres, the succession of south-facing coves generally makes swimming much more inviting.

Temperature follows a similar pattern. Sea temperatures remain relatively mild into October, particularly in the Algarve, although the difference between the exposed Atlantic beaches and the sheltered southern coves can matter more than the thermometer suggests. 

On the Alentejo coast further north, the sea cools faster once you're past September, and by November it's genuinely cold outside those sheltered pockets. So: if swimming after a day's walk matters to you, plan your Algarve stages for as late in the autumn as you can, and treat any dip on the northern half as bracing rather than balmy - Furnas and Amoreira aside.

The Practical Bits: Rain, Detours & Closures

A few things worth knowing before you book an autumn date:

River crossings and flooding. In the rainier stretch of autumn, particularly into November, some rivers along the route can rise enough to flood sections of trail. This isn't theoretical - after heavy rain, the Rota Vicentina organisation has had to recommend alternative routes around flooded sections, including on the stretch between Arrifana and Carrapateira. They're quick to flag it and mark a way around when it happens, so it's a manageable inconvenience rather than a trip-ending one, but it's worth knowing it exists.

High tide. This isn't just a matter of choosing the prettier route. Parts of the trail around Carrapateira are only safely passable at low tide, with an inland alternative used when the water is high. Check tide times before setting out rather than discovering the problem halfway along the cliffs.

Accommodation. Some of the smaller, family-run guesthouses along the trail take their own annual break outside the main summer season, so autumn availability isn't always as straightforward as you might expect. It's not universal, but it's common enough that booking ahead - rather than assuming you can find a room on the day - matters more here than it would in July.

Walking It

If you're weighing up how much of the trail to take on, the season split above is a reasonable way to decide: the northern section, Porto Covo to Arrifana, suits an earlier autumn start; the southern section, Arrifana to Lagos, holds its weather - and its birdlife - latest into the season; and our full 14-day Fishermen's Trail itinerary lets you walk through that north-to-south shift yourself, rather than reading about it.

However you plan to walk it - self-organised or with our help on logistics like luggage transfers and route guidance - I hope this gives you a genuinely useful picture of what autumn on this coastline is actually like.