April 7-9, 2023

Before ever leaving home, back in 2020, I had already made a list of my “must-see” places in Portugal. They included the Algarve, but not the beaches and beach towns that most people long for; Nazare, particularly in November, for the big wave surfing, and Lisbon, because, well, in all honesty, there was a place to store the bike there if needed while we flew home. Aside from that, I didn’t have a real “need” to see Lisbon. However, always at the top of my list for Portugal was the Douro Valley.

I’m not a wine snob; in fact, I probably know less than 99% of people about wines. I rarely even drink wine. But I’ve always been attracted to vineyards. The growing process, and the look and feel of a vineyard, have always given me a peaceful feeling. I felt the same way when I stepped into my grove of six hundred navel orange trees in southern California. There’s just something about helping nature to produce a beautiful product, and the feeling of walking among it, that speaks to me.

So even though the home of Port wine was calling me, it was the vineyards more than the wineries that I wanted to see. And the Douro River Valley teased me with that promise.

More than a year ago, while doing a little research on the area, I stumbled on an AirBnB that also spoke to me. It was a converted old mill house, on the edge of the Varosa River upstream from the Douro. There was nothing nearby. Surrounded by vineyards, olive groves and open land, it looked like a peaceful little house in a peaceful spead of countryside. I made a note to book it when we finally got to Portugal.

One thing that happens when you travel for extended periods is that you lose track of what day it is, and what date it is. So when we arrived in Vila Real, north of the Douro River, on Good Friday, nearly everything in town was closed. We walked the town, and while walking past the one restaurant that appeared to be open, a gentleman who was likely the owner ran out the door and asked if we wanted to eat dinner. He spoke only Portuguese, and when he realized that we spoke only English, he asked us to wait while he ran back inside and brought a waiter back out who spoke English. It was the only place in town that we could find that was open, and they were really wanting our business. So we said “Okay”, and they seated us at a table and brought us a menu. The first thing I saw was the prices, starting at over $100. I was about to get up, when I realized that I was looking at assorted seafood plates for large groups. The next page had individual items, and was closer to our budget. I ended up ordering a seafood tagliatelle, which turned out to be one of, if not the best meal I’ve had in the past two months.

If you enjoy seafood, this was a delicious meal, for about $14.

Diana ordered a traditional Portuguese “sandwich”, a Francesinha, which translates to “Little French”, and is based on the croque monsieur. It’s made with bread, ham, steak, linguica sausage and covered in melted cheese, then topped with a fried egg and covered in a spiced tomato and beer sauce.

Not the kind of sandwich you eat with your bare hands.

And as usual, we ordered a bottle of wine with dinner, which with the exorbitant restaurant markup, came to about $8 for the bottle.

We spent the night at the Mira Corgo hotel in Vila Real (underground parking garage and reasonably priced, including breakfast buffet), and started our loop of the Douro Valley and points beyond the next morning.

Vineyards as far as the eye can see.

There are a lot of day cruises up the Douro River. Many stop at a couple of wineries for tastings, and for lunch at Pinhao. They have to go through this lock on the river.

Considerably smaller than the Panama Canal locks, but same concept.

Up to the height of the eastern side of the river, and on to Pinhao.

We’re not using a GPS for navigation this year; instead I’m using an old iPhone 8 and the maps.me app, and it has worked great, up until now. But for some reason this morning, I made a monumental error and didn’t realize it. I had punched in multiple waypoints to form a one hundred mile loop. After watching the boat come through the lock, we continued east to Pinhao, but there were so many tourists there on this holiday weekend that we turned around and headed back the way we came to a small roadside restaurant we had passed earlier. Finding it full as well, we got back on the bike, and that’s when I noticed the app was telling me to go nearly all the way back to the dam/lock, and take a small road south. I wasn’t sure how I had missed this turn, but I did as instructed, and we rode another ten miles back and turned up a tiny side road. After two miles, it came to a dead end at St. Eufemia Vineyards, which I then remembered that I had plotted into the phone as our first stop. The vineyard was closed (Easter weekend), and that’s when I realized that, unlike the Garmin GPS, or Google Maps, maps.me does not “assume” that you want to skip a waypoint and reconfigures your route. No, it insists that you go all the way back to the point you put in, before allowing you to continue on. So now we were again heading east, past the same roadside restaurant, past Pinhao and finally south on a new road.

The lushness of the Douro Valley vineyards fades quickly once you climb out of the valley, and the terrain changed to plains, then occasional forest, as we continued south then west again.

At a gas station near the direct center of absolutely nowhere, we stopped, not for gas, but for something to drink and an ice cream. While sitting at a small table enjoying our break, a woman in an Audi sedan pulled in. I thought I smelled burning brakes, but then noticed the smoke coming from the grille of the car. She got out and walked over to the couple sitting at the next table, which was also the cashier of the gas station and her husband/boyfriend, I think. They spoke briefly in Portuguese. The man never bothered to take his feet off of the chair across from him, and made it obvious that he had no intention of getting up to look at her car. Eventually, he relented and told her to pull the car around to the side of the building. As she started the car again, black smoke belched from the tailpipe, and the transmission made a terrible sound while the engine rpms increased but the car resisted forward movement. Eventually there was a loud “BANG!”, the car leapt forward, and died. She managed to get it restarted, and again it strained to move, but eventually crept toward the side of the building with a horrible metallic grinding noise. We quickly put our helmets on and got back on the road. Karma be damned, this was one ugly episode that was not going to end well for the woman or the Audi.

We continued past Vila da Ponte and on to Varzea de Abrunhais, to the little AirBnB that I was excited to finally meet.

The bridge over the Varosa River. This photo is taken from the path to our little house on the river.

Our own little vineyard. There are more vines, and olive trees, on the terraces above us that also belong to Quinta de Reciao, the owners of this little piece of heaven.

Looking back to the house from the vineyard. The vines won’t be full of green leaves and grapes for several months yet.

If you arrive on foot or by car, this little wagon awaits about two hundred yards up the path at the road. By motorcycle, with some care, we can ride right up to the door.

Across the river sits the remains of an old convent. This land once was covered in vineyards also, but now sits abandoned. If I was rich, I’d seriously entertain buying the land and moving in. It just needs a little fixing up.

We spent a couple of days just relaxing here. I had intended to do another loop through the Douro Valley, but the peacefulness of this place took over, and aside from a ride into Lamego for dinner one night, we never left. We enjoyed it so much that before we left, we booked another three night stay here coming up in a couple of weeks.

I can’t wait to return.