The real Algarve: 'A white-washed village adrift in the kissing sea'

With talk of air bridges opening, the beaches, splendid seafood and ramshackle charms of Olhão will soon be within reach again

Vitálio, 72, tubby and talkative, brushed lustrous hair, opens his barber shop at dawn. There’s a flow of customers blown in on the early tide – their fruit and veg picked and dug, fish hooked and delivered to the market at the end of the alley – and a handful of older insomniacs, here just to hang. Few come to get their hair cut, for Vitálio’s serves mainly as the bairro community centre. Read the newspaper, clack dominos, talk nonsense, fetch a café bica, scrape away at a lottery card. It’s the being here that matters, not the doing.

Folk are armpit-deep in the swell dragging for butterfly clams, or casting long lines for silvery sea bass