A low thatched building across a clearing in coastal pine forest at first light.

You smell it
before you see it.

Fourteen rooms on the Alentejo coast, ninety minutes south of Lisbon.

Enquire Rooms

The pines start about a kilometre inland and stop at the dunes, and somewhere in between the air changes and you know the sea is there without looking.

We built fourteen rooms in that gap.

Rooms

Nothing in them
you did not ask for.

Slatted shutter light falling across a concrete floor and a linen bed cover.

01

Morning

Every room faces east. The shutters are wooden, they are the only alarm clock, and you can shut them again.

Deep folds of undyed linen across the corner of a low pine bed.

02

The bed

Undyed linen on a pine platform. Changed on the third day, unless you would rather we did not.

A stone basin on a concrete ledge under a tall narrow opening.

03

Washing

One stone basin. The water is rainwater, filtered on site, and it is softer than you are used to.

A deep shaded veranda with pine posts and reed screens receding into the distance.

04

The veranda

Every room opens onto it. Reed screens take the edge off the afternoon without taking the light.

A day here

  1. 06:40

    A sand path through marram grass at first light, mist in the hollows.

    The path

    It is 2.1 kilometres to the water and at this hour there is nobody on it. Take the left fork at the broken fence.

  2. 13:15

    The surface of the saltwater pool, dark green under the pines.

    Out of the sun

    The pool is salt, not chlorine. The pines keep half of it in shade until about four, and everyone works that out by the second day.

  3. 18:50

    Low sun through the trunks of tall umbrella pines, dust in the light.

    Sideways light

    For about forty minutes the sun comes in flat through the trunks. It is the only part of the day we would ask you not to miss.

  4. 21:00

    The building after dark, warm light falling from the veranda openings.

    One table

    Dinner is at one table and there is no choosing. It changes daily because the delivery changed.

maresia

noun · Portuguese

The smell of the sea. Salt carried inland on the wind, strongest about an hour before rain. There is no single word for it in English, which is part of why we chose it.

The table

One menu.
It changes because
the delivery changed.

There is nothing to choose from because there is nothing to choose. Whatever arrived that morning is what there is, cooked over wood, at half past seven, at one long table.

The tomatoes come from the next valley and only in August. The fish is whatever the boats at Sines landed that day, which some days is nothing. If there is something you do not eat, tell us when you book and we will work around it without making a thing of it.

A low wood fire burning down to embers in a lime-washed hearth.
Hands tearing parsley into a shallow stoneware bowl on a worn pine counter.
Small tomatoes on the vine in a shallow stoneware dish.
One long pine table laid with plain stoneware and undyed linen.

Ninety minutes,
then a dirt road.

From Lisbon
0km
From the airport
0km
Unsurfaced at the end
0km
Dune path to the sea
0km

The last stretch is sand and it is fine in anything with four wheels. We will send the pin when you book, and we will come and get you from Grândola station if you would rather not drive at all.

Three ways to stay.

A guest room with the shutters folded fully back and pine trunks visible outside. A larger room beneath the original exposed pine barn trusses. The full length of the veranda, pine posts and reed screens in flat light.

Thirty-two square metres, east facing, opening straight onto the veranda. A bed, a chair, a shelf and a stone basin. Minimum two nights, three in August.

Under the original roof, with the rice barn's pine trusses left where they were. Sixty square metres, a separate sitting end, and enough height that the heat goes up rather than sideways.

Everything, including the kitchen and whoever is cooking that week. Minimum four nights. People take it for weddings and for birthdays they would rather not describe as weddings.

March to November.

Tell us roughly when and for how many. We answer within a day, and we will tell you honestly if the week you want is better somewhere else.

We do not send anything else.