We had travelled to the east of Portugal to visit a fascinating site of prehistoric art. The Côa Valley is an area of more than 10.000 open air paintings from the Paleolithic. We were curious what we will see there. The Côa river runs north along the border with Spain and into the Douro. In …
In Vila Real starts a former railway line along the Corgo river, which was converted into an Ecopista. The colors of the hills this time of the year were amazing! The route starts from an old train station on the outskirts of Vila Real (41.312678, -7.718249) There are no signs and it is just a …
Nur wo du zu Fuß warst, bist du auch wirklich gewesen. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) Only where you were walking, you have really been. Today this quote felt so true again, while we were hiking through the mountains near Vila Real. We drove up into the Serra da Alvão from Vila Real until we reached …
We had left Viseu, driving north and stopping at every gas station. The drivers of fuel tankers were on strike and there was no diesel available anymore. In the evening we reached Lamego with less diesel in the tank but we found a beautiful spot for the night. The next day we hopped from one …
At Santa Comba we visited the weekly market on Wednesday. It was raining a lot, but that didn’t scare the people. It was fun to do some shopping and admire all the different goods on sale. Salted cod and cheese are staple products for the Portuguese Different kinds of salted fish Spices, olives and dried …
Museo do Caramulo, Central Portugal, is a museum of vintage cars and an art collection featuring works by Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and other great masters. It is located on the southern slope in the mountains of the “Serra do Caramulo” overlooking a wide panorama. The museum was opened in 1959 by President Américo Tomás. As …
The plan was to continue the Ecopista the next day from the point where we had turned around in Tondela, but the weather put a spoke into our wheel ;-). The next day it was raining cats and dogs, so we decided to drive on. We found a very interesting museum in Caramulo – details …
After hiking in the mountains, we decided to change to riding the bikes for a while. We chose the Ecopista – or Via Verde how it would be called in Spain – along the Dão river, starting in Santa Comba Dão. The disused branch line once connected Viseu with Santa Comba Dão. Almost 50 kilometres …
Our second hike in the Serra da Estrela started near Manteigas. We were climbing the mountains with the camper to reach Pass Cruz da Jogadas with beautiful views over the Serra. (40.423894, -7.516474) From here the route from my Rother online guide took us first to the chapel of São Lourenço with great views into …
We had reached the Serra da Estrela, which are the highest mountains of the Portuguese mainland with a height up to 1993 m. With the Rother online guide downloaded, we were eager to do some hiking in these mountains. The first hike was taking us to countless weathered granite rocks at the plateau of the …
