A two-day driving loop from Lisbon: Cabo da Roca, Ericeira and Mafra

The loop in one line, and why you drive it this way round

Out on the A5 to Cascais, west along the Marginal to Guincho, north on the N247 past Cabo da Roca and Colares to Ericeira, inland on the N116 to Mafra, then home on the A21 and A8. Total distance is about 190 km, of which perhaps 60 km is genuinely slow coastal road. Driving it anticlockwise matters: you get the cliffs on your left hand all afternoon on day one, with the sun behind them, and you arrive in Ericeira in time for sunset rather than fighting westbound glare on the way back.

Rental from Lisbon airport runs roughly €30-55 a day for a small car outside August, and every rental firm will push a toll transponder at about €2 a day plus tolls. Take it. The A5 and A8 are conventional barrier tolls, but stretches of the A21 and the coastal motorways use electronic-only gantries with no cash lane, and settling those later at a post office is a genuine chore. A5 Lisbon to Cascais is around €1.60. Fuel sits near €1.70-1.85 a litre; budget €35-45 of fuel for the whole loop.

Day 1, 08:30-11:00: Cascais, Boca do Inferno and the Guincho road

Leave Lisbon by 08:30 or you will sit in the westbound A5 queue at Buraca. Thirty minutes later, park in the underground garage under the Cascais marina or the one on Avenida Marginal, both around €1.20 an hour, because the free spaces along the seafront are gone by 09:15. Walk the bay from Praia da Rainha to the Museu Condes de Castro Guimarães and the Casa das Histórias Paula Rego, the pyramid-roofed red museum by Souto de Moura, entry about €5 and rarely busy before noon. Coffee and a queijada on Rua Frederico Arouca costs under €4.

Then drive fifteen minutes west to Boca do Inferno, the collapsed sea cave where the Atlantic booms into a stone amphitheatre, free and worth ten minutes rather than an hour. Continue on the N247-8 to Guincho, where the dunes and the Serra de Sintra rise together and the wind is the point: this is a kitesurf and bodyboard beach, not a swimming one, and the water sits at 16-18°C even in August. There are two long-standing beach restaurants on the sand doing grilled fish at €18-26 if you want an early lunch here instead of later.

Day 1, 11:30-15:00: Cabo da Roca, Colares and the cliff villages

The N247 climbs from Guincho through pine and eucalyptus to Cabo da Roca, mainland Europe's westernmost point, marked by a lighthouse, a stone pillar with a Camões inscription and a car park that fills by noon in summer. Parking is free, the wind is savage even in July, and thirty minutes is the honest visit length. Do not wander onto the cliff edge for a photograph; the crumbling schist is why the fencing exists. From here the road runs north through Almoçageme and Colares, where vines grow in deep sand behind windbreak walls, one of Europe's oddest wine landscapes.

Two detours pay off. Azenhas do Mar is the white village spilling down a cliff above a tidal seawater pool, ten minutes off the route and best photographed from the layby on the approach road. Praia das Maçãs, the next bay, has an actual beach, parking on the seafront and cafés where a plate of lunch runs €12-16. Colares itself is a slow, shaded village worth twenty minutes for the old adega building and the tram terminus. Total driving between Guincho and Ericeira, with these stops, is a lazy three hours.

Why the car does not go into Sintra

Sintra sits ten minutes inland from Colares and every instinct says to drive up to Pena. Resist it. The road to the palaces is a single-lane loop with residents' priority, no legal parking near the gates, and a traffic scheme that has repeatedly closed it to private cars in high season. Cars queue for an hour to reach a barrier and turn around. If you go up at all, park at Portela de Sintra or in the paid lots below the historic centre at roughly €10-15 a day and take the 434 hop-on bus, which loops from the station past the Moorish castle and Pena.

The better plan is to leave Sintra out of this loop entirely and do it on a separate day by train from Rossio, 40 minutes and about €2.50 each way, arriving before 09:00. That way your two driving days stay about coast, cliffs and Mafra, and Sintra gets the full unhurried day it needs for Quinta da Regaleira, Monserrate and the National Palace. Trying to bolt Pena onto a driving loop is the single most common way visitors turn a good day into four hours of queuing.

Night 1: sleeping in Ericeira

Ericeira is a whitewashed clifftop fishing town that became Europe's first World Surfing Reserve in 2011, with eight recognised breaks inside 4 km, from the reef at Ribeira d’Ilhas to the beach break at Foz do Lizandro. Park in the free lots on the town's northern edge or the paid seafront bays and walk in; the old centre is largely pedestrian and the lanes are too tight for a hire car. Sunset from the Largo da Ribeira terraces over the fishing beach is the reason to stay the night rather than push on to Mafra.

For beds, the guesthouses and small hotels inside the old town run about €80-140 for a double from October to May, climbing to €150-220 in July and August when the surf schools fill everything. The surf lodges strung along the road towards Ribeira d’Ilhas are cheaper, roughly €60-110, with parking on site and a fifteen-minute walk into town. Dinner is the point here: grilled robalo, percebes when they are in, and the town's famous seafood rice for two at €40-55. Book a table for 20:00 on summer weekends or you will wait.

Day 2: Mafra's palace, library and hunting park

Twelve kilometres inland on the N116, Mafra delivers one of the largest buildings in Portugal: a royal palace, basilica and Franciscan convent begun in 1717 with Brazilian gold, its facade running some 220 metres. Free parking sits on the square in front. Inside, the library is the sight — a barrel-vaulted rococo hall of about 36,000 volumes, patrolled at night by a small colony of insectivorous bats that eat the paper-damaging pests, a genuinely working conservation arrangement. Entry runs roughly €6-10 and the interior circuit takes 90 minutes. The basilica has six historic organs, occasionally demonstrated at weekend concerts.

If you have children or need air, the Tapada Nacional de Mafra is the old royal hunting park just north of town, 800 hectares behind a 20 km wall, with deer, wild boar and marked trails; entry is about €7 and the wildlife-watching circuits need booking. Lunch in Mafra is unglamorous and good: a workers' tasca off the main square will do soup, a meat main, wine and coffee for €12-15. Leave by 15:30 to keep the return drive out of the evening crush.

Getting home, and where to sleep back in Lisbon

The fast way back is the A21 east to the A8, then south into Lisbon, about 45 minutes clear. If you have appetite for one more stop, Óbidos is 40 minutes north on the A8: a complete walled town, a ginjinha served in a chocolate cup for €1.50, and a bookshop installed inside a church. That turns day two into a long one, so only do it if you left Ericeira by 09:00. On the way in, Queluz palace sits five minutes off the IC19 and makes a shorter, pinker alternative that closes at 18:00.

Coming back into the city with a car, do not book a room in Alfama, Bairro Alto or Chiado — the streets are one-way, tight, and mostly residents-only parking. Park-and-stay bases that work are Parque das Nações, where hotels have garages at €12-20 a night and the metro reaches Baixa in 20 minutes; Alcântara near the LX Factory, with street garages at similar rates; and Marvila or Beato along the eastern riverfront, where lofts and small hotels sit at €90-140 with easier kerbside space. Return the car in the morning rather than paying two nights of garage.