Óbidos is a village in a box: a complete medieval walled town, whitewashed and flower-bordered, on a low hill over the plain. You enter through a gate decorated with blue and white tiles and then follow one long, steep street of cobbles to the castle at the top. The castle is now a hotel, which says something about how the Portuguese treat their history. The whole place is small enough to walk end to end in twenty minutes, and nearly all of it is pedestrian.
There is a charming story behind its status. In the thirteenth century King Dinis gave the town to his bride, Queen Isabel, as a wedding present, and for centuries afterward Óbidos belonged to the queens of Portugal. It was once a port, too, since the lagoon beside it, the Lagoa de Óbidos, used to reach much further inland before silt filled it in. Today the town is also known as a book town, with shelves in old churches and market buildings, and for ginjinha, a sour cherry liqueur drunk here from a small chocolate cup.
The riding to Óbidos is mostly gentle rural roads across farmland, orchards and low hills, with the long aqueduct and the walls of the old town appearing over a rise. It is a calm approach rather than a thrilling one, and the real action is on the coast, a few minutes west, where the road meets the Atlantic. In summer the town is crowded by midday with coaches, so the best time to see it is early in the morning or in the evening when day-trippers have gone and the stone turns warm. The cobbles inside the walls are slippery, particularly when wet, and a motorbike is best parked outside.
Óbidos itself has around eleven thousand residents across its municipality, and the nearby spa town of Caldas da Rainha, five kilometres away, is the larger place, with fuel, supermarkets and a ceramics tradition worth a look. Caldas was founded by another queen, Leonor, who built a hospital there beside hot springs in the fifteenth century. Back in Óbidos, find a table near the walls and try the cherry liqueur, though one is plenty if you are riding on.