the farm you cannot drive to

Stay of the week

Fajã dos Padres

Quinta Grande, Madeira

Fajã dos Padres is a farm at the foot of a cliff on the south coast of Madeira, and the farm is the point rather than the backdrop. Vines, bananas and mangoes grow on the shelf of land between the rock and the water. Eight cottages stand among them, and there is a restaurant on the shore below.

There are two ways down: a cable car, or a boat. There is no third. That single fact does more to shape a stay here than any of the rooms do. You do not nip out for anything. You do not drive somewhere for lunch and come back for a swim. Whatever came down with you is what you have, and the days arrange themselves around the farm and the water instead of around a plan.

The eight are named rather than numbered: the Boat House, the Sailor's House, the Bungalow, José Soldado, the Vine House, Julia's House, Seifia's House and Tia Maria. They are self-catering, which suits a place you cannot casually leave, and the restaurant on the shore is there for the evenings you would rather not cook. Eight houses on working farmland is a small enough number that the farm is still the thing you notice.

Two practical notes. The postal address is Quinta Grande, not Ribeira Brava further along the same coast — take it from their own page when you plan the last part of the journey. And this is not our house: it is not featured here, and the link below goes to its owners' own page.

It can currently be booked through its own site, at fajadospadres.com, where their prices and their own arrangements live. See the house → (opens the property's own site in a new tab)

Three places we found this week

• Hotel Faro Lariño

  Lariño, A Coruña, Galicia

  Nine rooms inside a decommissioned Costa da Morte lighthouse that worked until the late 1980s. Each room is named for a state of the sea or sky outside its window — foam, mist, storm and night among them.

  From the write-up →

• Casas de Incensos

  Lajes do Pico, Azores

  Instagram · @casasdeincensos

  This property's photos live on its own Instagram. Showing it loads the post from Instagram (Meta), which may set cookies — and one click shows every Instagram post on this page and is remembered by your browser. Nothing loads from Meta until you choose.

  Show the Instagram post →

  Five basalt cottages, each built for two, brought back by an architect on the site of a hamlet whose families left around 1940 when the new road drew them away. There is a shared house for dining, and its terrace looks over the pool, the incense trees and the sea.

  From the write-up →

• Moinho de Estorãos

  Ponte de Lima, northern Portugal

  A granite watermill beside the old bridge over the Estorãos, let whole to two people. The water wheel and the grindstone are still in place, which is how you tell a conversion was taken seriously.

  From the write-up →

One house a week is a slow way to build a collection. It is also the only way to keep it honest.

— Nick