I got together with the boys (apart from Big Ears, who was working) for a beer last night. We picked out our favourite bits of the Portugal trip. They might help you if you’re thinking of going (and if you’re not, you should…)

1 The Sera da Estrela
In a trip packed with amazing roads, perhaps the best roads were here – there may have been one or two stretches elsewhere that were a bit better, but most were almost-but-not-quite as good as the roads across these mountains, so for overall quality, it’s the winning riding area. We stayed in a little village up on the mountain, but we might have been better staying in Covilha or Manteigas, one of the big towns a little lower down.

2 Vila Real and the Port slopes
Vila Real was our first stop in Portugal and it was great (though we’d have got more from it if we’d explored, but we ate at the hotel – great, but the other old towns we visited were so lovely I think we missed a trick there) but really it’s another area that stood out for the quality of the riding, on the crazy, twisty valley roads surrounded by terraces of vines for port.

3 Elvas
This was probably our favourite town – just great to explore the old streets, seeing all the fortifications. And the people in Elvas were perhaps the friendliest of the whole trip (though all the Portuguese we met were lovely).

4 Chaves
Mostly for the fabulous hotel in the fort (Sao Francisco) but also because the roads around it were spectacular: fast, smooth, wide, twisty and uber-quiet. We hit it towards the end of a long trip and you can be a bit jaded by then… but the riding really re-energised us all.

5 Evora
We didn’t stay overnight in Evora, but we stopped here for lunch because we thought we’d also take a bit of time to see the famous chapel of bones – but that didn’t work, because we’d left Tidy Tim to arrange it and he took us to the wrong church… However, the town itself was lovely, the lunch was great and if we go back we’ll definitely go to the right church (the Royal church of Sao Francisco).

Getting to Portugal couldn’t have been easier, with Brittany Ferries. We had a really long trip – sailing out on Sunday and back on Wednesday night – but it’d be easy to do it on a short schedule (sailing back on a Monday). And while we really enjoyed all of the riding, we felt that overall most of the best of the roads were towards the north of the country. Unless you really want to see Elvas and Evora (which were great) you could probably go no further south than the Sera da Estrela and have a fabulous trip in a shorter time.