Could this be Europe's longest beach?

It’s a continuous chain of back-to-back smaller sand stretches on the Atlantic coast of this country

Summer is here once again, and all sorts of beach rankings and visuals will flood the Internet eager to satisfy holidayers’ curiosity and influence them in their choice. Yet surprisingly enough one question remains unsolved and still divides experts and amateur connoisseurs to this day: Which is the longest beach in Europe?

We’ll throw our hat in the ring of that debate with the argument that it is fairly easy to define the longest stretch of sand on the Old Continent, but there is one problem – it doesn’t have a single name as it represents a chain of smaller beaches which are all connected; thus, we would have to describe it geographically to you. What’s clear is that you will find it on the Atlantic Coast of Portugal, south of the capital Lisbon.

45 kilometres - long enough for a beach with no name?

In the age of easy online navigation, it’s actually kind of fun to have to struggle a bit and not be able to type a specific location in your digital map application directly.

The beach in question stretches from the Troia Peninsula down to the resort town of Sines and goes for 45 kilometres to form a beautiful and very elegant bow arc or crescent bay, if you will.

The beach is divided among three municipal territories and several smaller named beaches, so it doesn’t form a single continuum in the administrative sense, but its geographical shape cannot be ignored.

The nameless beach is formed by the following smaller and named beaches (from south to north): Areão, Melides, Comporta, Aberta Nova, Carvalhal, Pego, Atlântica, Bico das Lulas, Tróia -Galé and Tróia-Mar.

The coastal landscape is characterised by a low coastline of extensive sandy beaches, sometimes made up of the reddish sediments of recent sandy cliffs. The beaches, with golden sand and a Blue Flag, make these places a privileged destination.

In addition, this mega-beach features many hotspots nearby in terms of biodiversity, fauna and flora, such as the Serra da Arrábida Natural Park, the Tróia Peninsula Dunes Botanical Reserve, and the Sado River Estuary.