Central Portugal

UNSPOILT LANDSCAPES AND HISTORIC VILLAGES

This is a fascinating and extremely varied 10-day trip that covers some very little know and seldom visited areas in Portugal, featuring some very unique and beautiful landscapes, exceptionally charming towns, villages and historic sites, as well as some great hotels.

We begin our trip in Evora, one of Portugal’s most historic and unspoilt cities, and surrounded by rolling hills covered in cork oak woods and bucolic pastures, typical of the Alentejo, whose countryside has been shaped by centuries of rural life and abounds in well-preserved heritage.

From Evora we continue north to the Alto Alentejo and two of its most captivating hilltop border towns, both of which act as unsurpassable vantage points that reveal the vast scale and emptiness of the region (the Alentejo happens to be the least densely populated region in all of Portugal). Upon visiting one of these hilltop towns, the late José Saramago (arguably Portugal’s most famous writer and winner of the Noble Prize for Literature) claimed that all of Earth could be seen… While this isn’t entirely true, the views from the village’s breathtaking castle grounds do indeed seem to extend forever, including all the way to the Serra da Estrela mountain range in the north (visited later in the trip), and well into Spain to the east. We spend a few days here in the Serra de São Mamede, following old medieval roads and cobbled streets through picturesque villages, exploring hilltop fortresses, walking through magnificent flower-filled cork oak landscapes and through exceptionally quiet valleys and traditional rural countryside.

Finally, we head north again, stopping en route to do a lovely walk along the all-important Tagus River (the longest river in the Iberian Peninsula), before arriving at the Serra de Estrela (UNESCO Geopark), whose area is protected under the auspices of the Parque Natural da Serra da Estrela. Here we encounter a landscape that is strongly influenced by glaciation, creating an interesting morphology with boulders, moraines, glacial lagoons and deep U-shaped valleys, as well as being dominated by granitic rocks of over 300 million years old. We spend the last few days of the trip here walking amongst towering mountain peaks, upland plains replete with enormous boulders, beautiful forests, pastures and high-altitude agricultural land.

All the hotels we use are absolutely lovely, and we finish in style at a 5-star Relais & Châteaux affiliated boutique hotel in the mountains of Serra de Estrela, where we spend the last 3 nights of the trip.

KEY INFORMATION

The fitness level for all trips is classified according to the average distance and elevation gain of the walks offered, with fitness levels ranging from 1-5, see here for more details.