This promontory sticks out alone into the forbidding Atlantic ocean - it's the most south-westerly point of Europe. My mother and I got up astonishingly early and drove for an hour and a half to get there just after sunrise, at about 7:30am. We were almost alone there, apart from a few local and mad fishermen, hanging off the cliffs. I like fish, but I don't think it's worth dying for!
The scenery is quite different as you near the cape. Unlike the gently undulating land of the Algarve, which is decorated with olive and aloe vera, the land becomes bleaker. Trees start to become lopsided, then stop, and the land becomes rockier and flatter. The cape itself is high, flat, and stony. The sides are sheer cliffs, but there isn't much of a slope down to them. At the far end, the end of Europe, is a lighthouse keeping ships away from these dangerous rocks.
The rock here appears incredibly hard. The sea is pounding at these cliffs constantly, but signs of erosion are few and far between. There are a few stacks and islands off-shore, indicating that the cliffs used to extend further out, but this rock is fighting to the death.
The lighthouse at the end is open to visitors, and one can walk around it to see the end of the cape. After the end of the mainland, there is an astonishing stack, about 200 yards off-shore. It looks man-made, and is almost symmetrical. It consists of a rectangle, with a cave hollowed out, and what looks like a church tower balanced on top.
About 800 yards from the end of the Cape is a former convent. It's pretty small, and can't ever have housed than many nuns. It's a pretty remote and difficult spot - we went on a fine summer day, but even so it was windy and cool. In the winter, and during storms, this must have been an awful place to live! The convent now contains a restaurant, on which I can't comment as it was shut in the early morning when we visited.
The place is fascinating, but also thought-provoking. The sea here seems so indifferent to life, or anything apart from itself, that it is almost frightening. We had been going to stop at a beach nearby for a swim, but after seeing the fury with which the waves attacked the cliffs at Cape St Vincent, we drove home instead.