A case for travelling just after the season ends, when the restaurants are still open and the light is better anyway.
The Algarve in October is a different country to the one that fills the travel supplements in June. The beaches are not empty — there are always surfers, retirees, the local families who use the sea year-round — but they are not crowded. You can find a spot. You can hear the water.
The restaurants are still open, but the menus have shifted. The tourist dishes have retreated to the back of the card. What remains is what the kitchen wants to cook: the slow-braised things, the soups, the fresh catch from boats you can see from the harbour wall.
The light, too, is different. October light in southern Portugal has a quality that August does not: it comes in at an angle, it lasts longer at the edges of the day, it turns the limestone cliffs a colour that has no good English word for it.
I go every year in the second week of October, and every year I come back wondering why I ever went anywhere in summer.