In the summer of 1663, a 24-year-old Portuguese queen came to Tunbridge Wells to drink from the Chalybeate Spring. Catherine of Braganza had married Charles II the year before, bringing a dowry that included Bombay and Tangier, and the court hoped the iron-rich water would help her give him an heir.
There was hardly a town to greet her. Dudley, Lord North had come across the spring only in 1606, and visitors either camped on the common or found rooms in Southborough and Rusthall. Charles’s own mother, Henrietta Maria, had spent six weeks in tents on the common in 1630, the summer he was born. The Walks would not get the clay tiles that named the Pantiles until the end of the century, after Princess Anne’s young son slipped there in 1698. Catherine’s court stayed for part of the summer, then moved on to Bath.
The waters never gave Catherine a child, but her visit added to the spa’s royal glamour, and she is often credited with making tea the fashionable drink at the English court. She also came from a country whose spa tradition is older than ours, and a family half-term is a good excuse to go and see it.
Where Portugal’s spa story begins…
Caldas da Rainha, about an hour’s drive north of Lisbon, is named after another queen. The story goes that in the 1480s Queen Leonor, travelling near Óbidos, saw villagers bathing in strong-smelling sulphur pools, tried the water herself and felt better. In 1485 she founded a thermal hospital on the spot, and it is usually described as the oldest in the world. The town’s name means “the Queen’s hot springs”.
Children will care less about the hospital than about what surrounds it. Most mornings the main square, known as the Praça da Fruta, fills with what the regional tourist board calls the only daily open-air fruit and vegetable market in Portugal. A few streets away, the Bordallo Pinheiro factory has made its cabbage-leaf plates and ceramic frogs since 1884, and its shop is a good place to find a present for whoever is feeding the cat back home.
Óbidos is ten minutes away, a walled village where you can walk the ramparts, holding small hands tightly, as there is no rail on the inner side for much of the way. Foz do Arelho, where the Óbidos lagoon meets the sea, has calm water for paddling. Nazaré is half an hour north, and on a big day in winter crowds gather on the headland by the lighthouse to watch surfers ride some of the largest waves in the world.
With a longer holiday, keep driving north towards Coimbra to Luso, a spa town whose spring water is one of Portugal’s best-known bottled brands. Above it rises the Buçaco forest, walled in by Carmelite monks in the 1600s, with marked trails, a turreted palace hotel and the ridge where Wellington’s Anglo-Portuguese army held off the French in 1810. Kent has a claim on him too, since he died at Walmer Castle in 1852.
A spa in the Algarve hills
If your family prefers the Algarve, Caldas de Monchique offers the same idea in miniature. The spring in this small wooded village, a short drive inland from Portimão, has been in use since Roman times, and the water comes out of the ground at about 32°C. It makes a shady change from the beach, and the road beyond climbs to Fóia, at 902 metres the highest point in the Algarve, with views down to the coast.
Getting there, and what has changed
Gatwick is less than an hour’s drive from Tunbridge Wells, with direct flights to Lisbon, Porto and Faro, all under three hours. Portugal runs on UK time, so small children arrive without jet lag and bedtime stays bedtime. Pick up a hire car in Lisbon for Caldas, or at Faro for Monchique. If Portugal is already on your family’s list for something longer, our recent look at why British families keep moving to Portugal covers schools, healthcare and where people settle.
A few things are different at the border if you haven’t travelled for a while. On your first trip under the EU’s new Entry/Exit System, expect to stop at a booth to give fingerprints and a photo, although children aged 11 or younger are not fingerprinted. The Foreign Office’s advice for Portugal also says passports must have been issued less than 10 years before the day you arrive and stay valid for at least three months after you leave. If grandparents are taking the children away without you, anyone under 18 travelling with someone who isn’t their parent or legal guardian needs a letter of authorisation. Leave extra time at the airport on the way home as well, since the checks can apply when you leave.
Visitors can spend up to 90 days in any 180 across the Schengen area. Some families who fall for Portugal start looking at longer stays, and buying a holiday flat no longer brings residency with it. Portugal’s golden visa stopped accepting property purchases in October 2023 (of the investment routes that remain open, a €500,000 qualifying fund is one of the most widely used), although the minimum stay is still only seven days in the first year.
Pack each family member’s GHIC, which covers necessary state healthcare in Portugal, and take out travel insurance as well, because the card does not replace it.
A half-term in two days
With only a few days, fly into Lisbon, drive an hour north and base yourselves in Caldas. Give the first morning to the market and the ceramics, walk the walls of Óbidos after lunch and finish with an early dinner by the lagoon at Foz do Arelho. On the second day, head to Nazaré if the swell is up, or back to Óbidos for another wander if it isn’t, and leave the afternoon free for the drive back to the airport.
If you’re staying in the Algarve, give one morning to Monchique: the spa village first, then the drive up to Fóia for the view, and back down to the coast for a late lunch.