Exploring the rural beauty of Northern Portugal | Canada Voices

The threshold of boredom, journalist Martha Gellhorn once wrote, is like the threshold of pain: different in all of us.

For me, nothing is more boring than being in a city for too long. The traffic, the noise, being among people who are forever strangers. I was in Porto, Portugal, and felt time tugging at my sleeve. The only cure – the only pain-killer – was getting away from it all, if only for a weekend.

I fled north, slinging around the city of Braga, and following the River Vez upstream. It was autumn, and the vineyards were red and orange, the hills were green with a grey delay lurking in the light and the colour. This mountainous country is known locally as “Little Tibet,” because of its extensive terraced hillsides.

I made first for Sistelo, a small village on the edge of Peneda-Gerês National Park, where I set out on one of the many trails that leads up from the stone centre of the community into the leas and garden plots of the mountains. It was, at times, roughshod, a working path of loose stones, and wet with early winter rains.

A lack of building regulations means it’s difficult to find a part of Portugal’s northern country that doesn’t bear the mark and alterations of humankind. Most countryfolk have largely given up the hinterland for the cities and their suburbs, and many buildings and farms sit abandoned. These stone outbuildings and gardens of the countryside trickle into villages which, like terracotta veins, drip in a continuous line from towns to cities.

But there are still some working small holdings, little plots of terraced land on steep hills where patches of corn, pumpkin or brassica, and hefty-horned cattle wander at will along the rural pathways, their locations given away by the cold-hammered bells they wear around their neck. I passed several, and stopped on a mossy rock to eat my lunch and scratch the nose of a donkey that sidled up looking doleful.

This is the Celtic heart of Portugal, retaining a distinct dialect and many local customs, festivals and folk tales from thousands of years ago. There are ancient stone crosses, worn smooth by two millennia of rain, stuck on the side of the road, or guarding an artesian wellspring.

There are archeological sites – Citânia de Briteiros, Citânia de Sanfins and Castro de São Lourenço, to name three within a short distance from the national park – that show the extent of the Celtic settlements. It is, too, the birthplace of the bagpipes, known locally as the gaita de foles.

And there are several yearly festivals that celebrate the region’s Celtic heritage. Each Friday the 13th, the village of Montalegre is enveloped in a pagan celebration called Noite das Bruxas, or Night of the Witches – music, fireworks, roaring fire, ripe meat on the bone. And each spring, in Macedo de Cavaleiros, the Entrudo Chocaleiro festival sees locals dressing in colourful, raggedy outfits to burn effigies as a way to welcome the coming planting season.

My walk eventually circled back to Sistelo, where an afternoon market had appeared, run by the rural holdouts. One man sold sticky glass jars of honey; another had bags of chestnuts for roasting. An old woman sat behind a collection of lacey hankies and doilies that she had made herself.

Travelling in rural Portugal sometimes feels like being in a world before globalization. Not out of touch, but more in touch with itself than anywhere else. In the countryside, there is little touristic tat, and a refreshing lack of bombastic enterprise seen in the cities. These are farmers and fabricators, not salespeople, and they make little advance to convince you of their wares. The honey is good and pure; you either want it, or you don’t.

That evening, I stayed at Terra Rosa Country House, an estate near Ponte de Lima. The 70-hectare property is hedged by olive and cypress wood, and retains elements of its agricultural past: trapezoidal granaries, large stone water tanks, and a chapel where grape snippers could pray after a day in the vineyards.

I swam in the pool, and lounged on the terrace listening to the birds. And that night, I dined on roasted goat and a bottle of red Dão wine beside a roaring fire at A Carvalheira, a nearby restaurant.

The next day, I entered Peneda-Gerês National Park, driving across the park to the town of Pitões das Júnias, near the border with Spain. I had heard about the village from a friend; there was little information online, and northern Portugal remains a place of whispers and second-hand knowledge.

I arrived in the town, a quiet, meagre place, where open barns spilled their hay onto the cobbled street, and I began the walk to a whitewashed chapel at the top of a mountain: Capela de São João da Fraga.

This is an agricultural area where farmers continue to use a centuries-old system that relies on the collective management of the water, forests and pastures used by their animals. This method has helped keep the soil fertile, the rivers and springs clean, and the landscape unblemished; the farms are fully integrated into the rolling hills.

Passing a field, I encountered an elderly couple bent at the waist collecting squash. I hailed them, and the man proffered to me a lumpy gourd with a thick, reddened hand; I was only beginning my walk, and didn’t fancy carrying it for the next few hours. We talked a while, in Portuguese, of country things: the weather, the harvest and the chance of frost, which is not unheard of in the mountains. I promised to collect the gourd on my return.

I climbed up and up, though a brume of cloud, to the peak where the chapel stood alone, a simple, white, wind-beaten structure. Looking out over the veiled mountainscape, I felt a deluge of emotion: fatigue, relief, awe, hunger, anticipation of my gourd-gift. Notably, no pain, no boredom.

If you go

The best way to access northern Portugal is by car, which can be rented at the Porto airport. For something more self-sufficient, the Porto-based company the Getaway Van rents sleeper vans from $75 a day (the-getaway-van.com), and can recommend several driving routes, including the “Northern Portugal Celtic Territory.”

Terra Rosa Country House & Vineyard (terrarosa.pt) is a 70-minute drive from Porto’s airport. A night with breakfast can be had for $225.

A Carvalheira, in Ponte de Lima, (acarvalheira.com) serves typical Portuguese food, including pernil (pork), cabrito (goat), and bacalhau (salt cod).

For more information about Sistelo, and the hiking routes of the surrounding area, visit aldeiadesistelo.pt.

Special to The Globe and Mail

The writer was a guest of Terra Rosa Country House. It did not review or approve the story before publication.