Where to swim on an island with almost no sand: imported beaches, black pebbles, lava pools and municipal lidos.
The Azores are volcanic islands, so the coast is cliffs and boulders rather than sand. What they have instead is three different kinds of swimming place, and knowing which is which decides the afternoon: bays of black volcanic sand, natural pools that the Atlantic fills and refreshes, and built lidos with ladders into the open sea. A coast facing the swell closes often; the sheltered side of the same island is calm on the same day.
A kilometre of pale sand in the bay below Almagreira, and the longest beach in the Azores.
The sand here is yellow-white because it is ground-down limestone from the carbonate rock around the bay, which makes Praia Formosa unlike any other beach in the archipelago — every other Azorean beach is black or grey volcanic grit. The water shelves gently and stays clear a long way out, and the sixteenth-century Fortress of São João Baptista sits on the point at the western end. The Maré de Agosto festival takes over the beach and the field behind it every August.
Worth knowing: Two of the island's walks end here: the PR05SMA along the south coast from Vila do Porto and the PR06SMA over Pico Alto, so the car park doubles as a trailhead.
A semicircular cove of pale sand on the south coast, reachable on foot or by boat and nothing else.
Prainha has the same limestone sand as Praia Formosa a kilometre east of it, eroded out of the carbonate rock of its own cliff, and that cliff carries a fossil bed important enough that the cove is part of the Pedreira do Campo, Figueiral and Prainha natural monument. There is no road: the only way in on land is the PR05SMA, which drops to the sea here and then follows the coast on a stretch with a fixed cable. Nothing is provided — no lifeguard, no water, no shade.
Worth knowing: The register marks a signed inland alternative around this stretch, and in rough weather that is the one to take; the cove itself is no place to be caught by a south swell.
The island's second pale-sand beach, at the foot of a bay walled with vineyard terraces.
The Baía de São Lourenço is a protected landscape and it looks the part: a natural amphitheatre of dry-stone vineyard enclosures dropping in steps to the water, with the sand in the middle and natural rock pools at either end. It faces east, which makes it calm on the prevailing westerlies and choppy when the wind swings round. The road in comes down the side of the amphitheatre in hairpins and the car parks are up on the terraces rather than at the sand.
Worth knowing: The descent and the climb back out are both steep — leave time for the walk up, or come down by the PR06SMA and get a lift back.
A tidal pool under the cliffs at the island's eastern corner, below the terraced vineyards of Maia.
Maia is the last place on the road east and the pool is the reason to go: still, clear water held in the rock at the foot of a cliff that is worked in dry-stone vineyard terraces all the way up. The regional road ends at the bathing area itself, so there is no car park as such and cars stand on the road. Two wine presses dated 1579 survive in the hamlet above.
Worth knowing: It is exposed once a swell gets up from the east, and the walk down from Santo Espírito — the PR04SMA, an hour and a half — is the better way to arrive.
A sea-water pool beside the little fishing harbour in the bay where Santa Maria's history starts.
Anjos is a pool and a bathing platform built into the rock next to the harbour, sheltered enough to swim in when the open coast is not. The chapel above it is thought to be the oldest Christian building in the Azores, and Columbus is said to have come ashore here on the way back from his first crossing in 1493 — the statue on the square is his. The bay faces the open Atlantic on the north side of the island, so a northerly swell closes it.
Worth knowing: The PR01SMA coast walk from Bananeiras ends in the village, which makes the pool the obvious finish to the morning.
Facilities and lifeguard cover follow the municipal bathing season, which runs roughly from May to October and varies by council. A red flag is a closure, not a warning: it means the sea is beyond what the lifeguards can cover.
