Ericeira is one of those places that people who know Portugal tend to keep quietly to themselves. This small fishing town on the Atlantic coast, just 45km northwest of Lisbon, goes about its business with a charm and confidence that needs no validation. It is Europe's only World Surfing Reserve, and on any given day you will find surfers of every level in the water alongside locals who have been fishing these waters for generations. My wife and I have been coming here for years, and it remains one of our favourite escapes from Lisbon, whether for an afternoon or a long weekend.

Getting there from Lisbon is straightforward. The bus from Campo Grande takes between 56 and 80 minutes depending on the service. Carris Metropolitana run multiple services with varying routes, but all are direct and leave from the same bus bays at Campo Grande. My approach for many years was simple: turn up at Campo Grande and take the first bus going to Ericeira.

More recently though, I have started to take Uber for this journey. If you are going to Ericeira for part of your holiday, I would consider Uber/Bolt for door-to-door convenience. Ericeira bus station is inconveniently located far from the beach and hotels, and lugging heavy luggage on public transport is draining. When my brother and his young family had a holiday to Ericeira, we took an Uber from our flat in the Graça district to the hotel, and the kids didn’t complain once!

If you are heading to Ericeira from Lisbon airport, I would again strongly consider Uber or Bolt, with a base fare of around €45. To me this makes more sense than crossing Lisbon to Campo Grande bus station with luggage.

My wife grew up in Lisbon and I have been exploring Portugal since 2001. Between us, we have made this journey to Ericeira more times than we can count.
Related articles: Introduction to Ericeira - Ericeira beach guide

The bus is the option I use most often for this journey, and it is simpler than it first appears. All services depart from Campo Grande bus station in Lisbon, which sits on both the yellow and green metro lines and is easy to reach from anywhere in the city. My approach has always been to arrive at Campo Grande and take the first bus going to Ericeira. In practice, this works well. The only service worth actively avoiding is the 2751, which meanders through the countryside on regional roads and can take over 100 minutes. Every other service is a reasonable choice.

All buses on this route are operated by Carris Metropolitana. The four main services are the 2801, the 2803, the 2740 and the 2751. The 2801 is the fastest, completing the journey in around 56 minutes by staying on the expressways and skipping Mafra entirely, but it runs at weekday rush hours only and does not operate at weekends. The 2803 takes around 71 minutes and passes through Mafra. The 2740 takes around 78 minutes and is the most reliably frequent service throughout the week, including weekends. If any of these are waiting when you arrive, get on it.

Because the schedule varies by weekday, weekend and school holiday, I would always recommend checking the current timetable on the Carris Metropolitana website before you travel:
www.carrismetropolitana.pt/

Or for individual line timetables:
• 2740 - carrismetropolitana.pt/lines/2740
• 2803 - carrismetropolitana.pt/lines/2803
• 2751 - carrismetropolitana.pt/lines/2751
• 2801 - carrismetropolitana.pt/lines/2801

A single fare costs €4.50, purchased from the driver on board. The exception is the 2751, which costs €2.60, though given the much longer journey time the saving feels like poor value. There are no return tickets, so you buy the return fare on the bus back. The buses currently do not accept payment by bank card, so carrying cash is essential.

If you have a Navegante card and use the Zapping pre-pay system, the fare drops to €3.10. The card can be purchased and loaded at any metro station ticket machine and works across the metro, trains and Carris Metropolitana buses. If you are spending a few days in Lisbon, it is well worth having one.

For surfers, the journey is surprisingly accommodating and Carris Metropolitana buses allow for the transport of surfboards, provided they are placed in the luggage compartments beneath the bus.

The 2740 bus waiting in the Campo Grande bus station

The Ericeirabus departs from the Campo Grande bus station, GPS: 38.759, -9.159 (link to Google maps). The bus station is to the north of Lisbon and is served by the yellow and green metro lines.

Campo Grande bus station is not a conventional terminal building, and this catches out almost every first-time visitor. It is better understood as a series of bus bays spread around the Campo Grande metro station, which sits on both the yellow and green metro lines. There is little central signage, and it is easy to feel lost the first time you arrive.

The buses to Ericeira depart from bays 22, 23 and 24. Bays 23 and 24 serve routes that pass through Mafra, and bay 22 for express services. There are no facilities at the bays themselves, no ticket desk, no toilets, no information point. It is, in every practical sense, a large bus stop. Campo Grande is a busy business district though, so there are plenty of cafes and restaurants close by. I would avoid the cafes inside the metro station itself, which is a rather tired and gloomy building. The O Sol do Lumiar just below the NOS office building is a much better option for a coffee and a pastel de nata while you wait.

One thing worth knowing: the Ericeira bus can get very busy at weekends and in peak season, particularly the 11am service. Arriving 15 to 20 minutes before departure and joining the queue early is worthwhile.

The bus terminates at the Terminal Rodoviário on the eastern edge of Ericeira (GPS: 38.968, -9.401 - link to Google maps), around 1.5km from the historic centre and the beaches. Its hilltop position makes it feel further out of town than the distance suggests, and on my first visit I had to ask the driver whether this was the final stop. The walk into town is entirely downhill, but the return is another matter. I can tell you from experience that hauling heavy luggage back up that hill is thoroughly draining.

If you are travelling with luggage or heading to accommodation outside the centre, it is worth taking an Uber directly to your destination rather than tackling the walk. The fare is only a few euros, and the difference is significant at the end of a long day.

In summer, a beach bus runs from the terminal in a loop to the northern and southern beaches, including Ribeira d'Ilhas, from around 9am to 8pm. That said, an Uber is quicker and more convenient if you are not travelling light.

Ericeira bus station is modern but poorly located

Uber and Bolt are worth serious consideration for this journey, and I say that as someone who spent years defaulting to the bus. The convenience of door-to-door travel is hard to argue with, and it was absolutely the right call when my brother visited with his young family. No queuing at Campo Grande, no walk from the bus station at the other end, and the kids didn't complain once.

Fares from central Lisbon to Ericeira come in at around €32 for a standard UberX, with the Comfort option sitting at around €39. These are daytime prices at a quiet time of day, and fares rise with demand, so rush hour or weekend travel can cost noticeably more. For the difference between UberX and Comfort, I would choose Comfort every time. The cars are of a noticeably higher standard, and drivers will always favour a higher-paying fare, which matters when you are heading this far outside Lisbon.

That is worth expanding on. Ericeira is far enough from the city that at peak times you may find fewer available drivers, and some may be reluctant to head this far from their usual area. In my experience it is not a serious problem, but it is worth booking a little in advance rather than assuming a car will appear instantly. Bolt tends to be slightly cheaper than Uber, though in my experience Uber's cars and drivers are more consistently reliable, and that is what I use.

Both Uber and Bolt are safe and well established in Portugal.
Insight: Download the app and set up your account before travelling to Portugal. Fares are charged in euros, so it is worth linking a bank card that does not charge foreign currency fees if your home currency is not the euro.

If you are travelling directly from Lisbon Airport to Ericeira, you have two realistic options: Uber or Bolt directly to Ericeira, or the metro across Lisbon to Campo Grande and then the bus.

For most people arriving with luggage, the direct Uber or Bolt is the right choice. Under normal conditions the fare runs to around €45 and the journey takes around 40 minutes. There is, however, one important caveat about the airport specifically. Lisbon Airport is one of the busiest pick-up points in the city, and demand for drivers is consistently high. I have waited over 20 minutes for a driver, and when demand is high the fare will be considerably more than the baseline price.

If the airport fares are to much, the metro is a perfectly good alternative for getting across Lisbon. The airport is on the red line, and you need to switch to the green line at Alameda to reach Campo Grande. From there the bus to Ericeira runs as described above.

My honest suggestion is to take Uber or Bolt on arrival when you are tired and loaded with bags, and use the bus for the return journey when you know how everything works. At €45 each way, two Uber trips from the airport adds up to €90, which starts to feel steep when the bus costs €4.50 and is straightforward once you have done it once.

Ericeira is a wonderful place to visit but an awkward one to travel onwards from. It is not served by Rede Expressos or Flixbus, so for virtually any onward journey you will need to return to Lisbon first and continue from there. The one useful exception to this is Sintra.

The 1633 bus runs directly between Ericeira and Sintra, operated by Carris Metropolitana. The journey takes 45 minutes and a single ticket costs €2.60, making it one of the better value connections in the region. On weekdays there are over 15 departures a day, though services drop off considerably at weekends, so it is worth checking the timetable before you plan around it:
www.carrismetropolitana.pt/lines/1633

One thing worth knowing about the Sintra end: the bus departs and terminates at Portela train station (GPS: 38.802, -9.376), which is not the final stop on the Lisbon to Sintra train line but the penultimate one. From Portela it is a 1.7km walk of around 22 minutes to the historic centre of Sintra. It is a perfectly manageable walk, but worth factoring in rather than arriving and being caught out by it.

For anywhere else, Lisbon is the answer. The bus back from Ericeira to Campo Grande takes between 60 and 80 minutes depending on the service, and from there the city's train and bus connections open up considerably.

Discover more of Ericeira and central Portugal with our guides