Beach Science · October 2026 · 3 min

How Long Is This Beach? It Depends Who You Ask

One guide says 1.5 km. The tourist board says some 3. We measured 1.26. All three are looking at Praia da Rocha.

Praia da Rocha is the beach the Algarve puts in its own publicity. You would think someone had measured it. Several people have, and they do not agree.

Which one is right

All of them, which is the problem. A beach has no edges. At Falésia a guide keeps walking and counts all six kilometres. A map draws the sand in pieces, and the piece that carries the name Falésia is 1,334 metres.

Rocha is the same story with rocks in it. The tourist board's three kilometres are, in its own words, irregularly broken up by rock formations. Count through the rocks and you get three. The guide counts 1.5. The one continuous shape on the map is 1.26.

Nobody can tell you where this beach ends. Everybody has a number.

What to do with that

Use the guide's number to plan a walk. Use the map's number to know what you are standing on. Distrust anyone who gives you a beach's length to the nearest hundred metres without saying where they started.

It is also the reason this site has no list of the longest beaches in the world yet. We built one. Two of the beaches on it turned out to be in the wrong country, and one was measured at 37 kilometres on a coast where the map shows about 92. The list is back in the workshop.