We are two weeks away from our proper summer holiday. We are going to France (where else!) , with the first week in Provence in two hotels I've wanted to try for a while: Le Couvent des Minimes Hotel and Spa and Villa La Coste. We then will have our traditional one week in Ile de Ré in a rented villa.
I am usually a “juillettiste” (the French are either “juillettiste” or “aoûtiens” depending on when they prefer to take their summer holidays). Back when I still lived and worked in France, going away in July meant quieter coasts and a nearly empty Paris in August, which was bliss. It also streteched the holiday feeling out because work stayed light touch once everyone else had gone. The old saying about France shutting down in August was certainly true at the time.
But now that we take a week in mid-June to go to Paxos, we don’t mind going later in August. We’ve already had our dose of sun, blue skies, warm seas and lazing by the pool so we can wait longer. And by going the last two weesk of August, we’re banking on the fact that it should be a bit less busy. The crowds clearly thin out after August 15 which is a bank holiday in France.
We’ve been going to Provence many times and have stayed in many of the luxury boutique hotels so I aim to do a guide to those, including the last two, when I am back in September!
For now, following my guide to Comporta in the last issue, here’s the review of one of the two hotels we stayed last year in Comporta.
Have a great summer wherever you are.
Sublime Comporta is the name everyone gives you when you say you’re going to Comporta. It has been the anchor of the place for years, seventeen acres of umbrella pine at Muda, and it is also the hotel which built the dozens of villas across the road that I worried about last time.
So I went in wanting to like it, and mostly I did. The estate is beautiful, the staff are lovely, the beach club is a genuine asset. We spent three nights there at the end of July, the three of us, in a 2-Bedroom Cabana Villa with its own pool and there was much to like but see below for one caveat.
22 rooms, suites and 22 cabana villas spread over seventeen acres of umbrella pine at Muda, about forty-five minutes south of Lisbon.
the original rooms date from when Sublime started; the estate has grown outward in rows ever since, with more villas at the back and several towards the front, not far from the road.
several pools: one big communal, a 1,805 m² biological pool filtered entirely by plants, a children’s pool, a heated one in the spa, and private pools with the villas
beach club fifteen minutes away, shuttle every hour, included in the room rate. The best treat!
from €485 a night but much more in high season!
View the video tour on Instagram
One of the main draws is that it’s a short drive from Lisbon airport: about 1h30 depending on the traffic. The arrival immediately puts you in holiday mood: you turn off the main road onto a sandy track through umbrella pines and the low white main building appears. The estate is huge - 68 hectares - and the villas are spread apart although you can see your neighbours depending on where you are or sit.
There is no real public transport, so you need a car although if you only spend time at the hotel and at the beach, you won’t need one on site. Bikes are provided and there is a free shuttle from the hotel to their private beach.
The idea, as far as I can tell, was to build a luxury hotel that the landscape almost doesn’t notice. The villas sit on stilts so they touch the ground less, the roofs are low, and the materials - white render, natural wood, polished concrete - come straight from the local cabanas, the little wooden houses of the fishermen and farmers around here.
The arrival is lovely. Reception, the entrance hall, the sitting room, the room the restaurant is in: all très très chouette, the kind of spaces you want to stop and stay in rather than walk through. Sand underfoot, pine everywhere, that low Alentejo horizontal thing done properly.
The villa itself felt warm and well thought through. The overall atmosphere is very pleasant and there are lots of nice touches. Salvaged antique pieces sit beside contemporary furniture, blue-and-white striped linens, polished concrete floors. There’s a kitchenette too, so you can stay in if you want.
Some of the fittings are starting to date though. The grey floor tiles, the bathroom taps, it all reads early 2000s rather than now. Je chipote, I know. But at this price I think you’re allowed to.
There are bicycles to borrow to get around the estate, and towels for both the pool and the beach.
The outside is great. You open onto a large terrace and the private pool. It’s all shaded by pine trees which explain why the pool feels cold even with average temperatures of 35 degrees in summer!
The big one is the main pool by the reception and next to the spa. It is very lovely and actually was quite warm even though it’s not heated. But it’s wide, open and well enough oriented that it takes sun all day, so by August it sits at exactly the temperature you want: refreshing, not cold. There’s a small separate pool for children next to it, which families will be glad of.
My one complaint is the seating. There are about twenty loungers around it, which is not many at two in the afternoon.
You can order food at lunchtime: ice creams, salads, sandwiches. Très sympa, and enough that you don't have to move. Next to it is the famous firepitswith seating all around, which to be fair really looks cool.
We didn’t try it but there’s also an indoor heated pool, located inside the Spa Terracota, perfect for relaxing year-round.
And then you have the biological pool and you can book villas that are just by its side, meaning you can dive into it from your deck. I quite like that idea and I would try this next time. The bio pool is one of the largest chemical-free freshwater bio-pools in Europe, filltered entirely by aquatic plants and a natural ecosystem.
You also get your own in a Cabana Villa, tucked behind the villa in the pines with planting around it for privacy. Ours came with the villa and it was a beautiful thing to look at. It is also unheated, and the orientation means the sun leaves it by three or four. Even in full August, at 32 to 34°C, it stayed un peu fraîche. You are paying a great deal for a pool that works for about four hours a day.It’s compact and unheated, which you do notice as I mentioned above! That is a bit of a pity but quite common around Portugal and you have to admire the commitment to saving energy too.
I had read that some villas sit closer to the road so I had asked not to be there but unfortunately they can’t guarantee it. I do recommend asking for one away from the traffic just to have a bit more chance of getting one.
In practice:
Avoid rooms 16 to 25. On the site map they look nowhere near the road. They are. You hear it, a lot, in either configuration. The map lies.
Book zone Q. These are the original rooms from when Sublime started, the smallest on the estate, and by a distance the most peaceful. This is what I would book if I came back.
The rooms facing the bio-pool are third row, probably more sheltered, smaller than the villas but with that plant-filtered pool right there. Likely lovely. I think they would be lovely and more enough for a couple.
The big villas at the back are very quiet, and I suspect fairly unaffordable.
The two-bedroom cabana villas are the ones everyone books because they work well for families. The two suites have their own entrances and share a living room, with the private pool just outside - and with Mademoiselle in the second bedroom, having a proper living room in the middle provided that separation and privacy that both sides required. Each bedroom has a big bathroom with both a bath and a shower, which is more generous than most hotels manage once, never mind twice.
This advice is for the original Sublime Comporta where we were last year (2025). Since then they opened Sublime Comporta Sand, which is 750m away on the other side of the road and has many more cabanas. The choice of accommodation is thus extended and maybe there are quieter options there.
Although I think this makes Sublime now more of a resort than a boutique hotel. I’d be interested in views of people who have stayed here this year.
Breakfast was lovely with lots to choose from, great settings inside and out and several special dishes to choose from every day.
The main restaurant, Sem Porta, is very good: contemporary global cooking, herbs from the garden, fish from the local boats, in a room that references the old rice-storage buildings of the region. Tables go quickly in high season, so book it when you confirm the room.
They do offer lots of other food experiences including a quite special one around a marble counter, framing a flickering fire, where you can watch the Chef “practice ancestral cooking methods.” It was quite expensive and we wanted to try restaurants out of the hotel so we didn’t go for it but I was tempted!
They also can do room service. We had it one night. It was fine, nothing memorable but very handy.
Fifteen minutes from the hotel, shuttle out on the hour and back on the half hour, or you drive. Plenty of space, unlike the main pool. Towels there, and you order drinks and food to your chair.
A long, long beach, big and wide and Atlantic, like the ones from my childhood. The water is very cold, as I knew it would be but it’s so hot outside that when you need to get cooler, the waves draw you in and you feel so refreshed. Really beautiful.
And it’s included in the room rate, whichever room you’re in. So between getting a room with a private but not heated pool and a cheaper room that still gets you access to the beach club, I know what I’d choose next time!
The staff are young, smiling and really. nice and friendly. You also have kind of a “butler” with your two bedrooms cabana although we didn’t quite use his services much.
You can contact reception via what’sapp at any time, including when you are at the beach club, which is handy.
We had a very pleasant stay there although we didn’t get to enjoy our private pool much. If I went back, I would book the smallest room in zone Q. You get the same estate, the same big pool, the same beach club and a great deal more quiet, for a fraction of what we paid.
We didn’t get to try all the activities that they can organise for you as we mainly explored villages by ourselves and enjoyed long lazy days on the beach but that would probably add to the allure of the place.
It’s a hotel for families, couples and small groups who want privacy, nature and good service with easy access to the beach.
Would I go back? Maybe but there are so many new hotels opening there that I’d be tempted to try them, especially those in Melides, which is less discovered (kind of) than Comporta itself.
What about you, would you go?
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.