Évora Alentejo Backroads
A 282 km loop
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Why this ride
Built for flow, views and useful stops rather than navigation busywork. A 282 km loop that starts and ends near Lisbon, about 5 h 07 of riding. The plan has 1 food stop marked.
Roadbook
- Lisbon
start
Lisbon is built on hills, as the old joke goes, to give the trams something to do. The city rises from the north bank of the Tagus river on seven hills, a tumble of tiled houses, church domes and steep cobbled lanes, with yellow trams creaking up the slopes, and the great red suspension bridge, the 25 de Abril, spanning the estuary. In 1755 a huge earthquake, followed by a tsunami and fires, destroyed much of the centre and killed tens of thousands, and the flat grid of the Baixa district was rebuilt afterwards under the Marquis of Pombal. The hill quarters of Alfama and Mouraria, which came through, still have their medieval twists and turns.
The city's character lies in small things. Fado, the melancholic music of longing, comes from cellars in Alfama and Bairro Alto, and the best places are small and quiet. Tiled walls cover buildings in blue, white and yellow. At Belém, just west of the centre, the Tower of Belém and the Jerónimos Monastery commemorate the age of exploration, when Portuguese ships sailed to India and Brazil, and a bakery nearby sells custard tarts, the pastéis de Belém, made to a recipe that is a close secret. Cod, grilled sardines and strong coffee fill the rest of the day.
The ride out of town toward the Atlantic is a favourite. The N247 follows the coast west from Cascais, passing Guincho beach, a windy surfing spot backed by dunes, and then reaching Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point of continental Europe, a cliff of about a hundred and forty metres above the ocean. Inland lies Sintra, with its palaces hidden in misty hills. Roads are generally good but busy, and the cobbled streets in town are very slippery when wet, so take care on tram tracks, which can catch a front tyre. Wind and sea fog are common on the coast.
Fuel is easy to find, though on the city's one-way streets finding parking can take time. Motorway tolls are electronic, so check how to pay if you plan to use them. Late spring and early autumn are the best seasons, and August brings crowds and heat.
- Évora
food
Alentejo is the part of Portugal that looks as if someone had ironed it. South and east of the Tagus, the land rolls out in low swells of wheat, olive and cork oak, with white villages on the hills and storks nesting on the chimneys, and Évora sits in the middle of it, about 130 kilometres east of Lisbon. It is a walled city of some fifty-five thousand, and for riders it is the natural pause in a long day of empty road.
The country around it is the montado, an open woodland of cork oaks and holm oaks with pasture beneath, where black Iberian pigs root for acorns and the cork is stripped from the trunks by hand every nine years or so, leaving the bare trunks a dull orange for a season. The roads that cross it are some of the most relaxed in western Europe: long, smooth straights, easy bends and wide skies, with few cars outside the towns. Distances are large and services thin, so fill the tank in Évora rather than gambling on the next village. Summer heat can reach forty degrees and more by mid-afternoon, and the hours between two and five are best spent under a roof; spring, when the fields are green and covered with poppies, and autumn, with the first rain and the cork harvest done, are far more comfortable.
A few kilometres west of the city, at Almendres, stand the biggest group of standing stones in the Iberian Peninsula, a cromlech of nearly a hundred granite monoliths set out on a hillside by Neolithic farmers around six thousand years ago. It is easy to reach down a track off the road and almost always quiet, with the stones casting long shadows at dawn and dusk. The nearby Anta Grande do Zambujeiro, a huge burial chamber, gives a similar sense of deep time.
Évora's food is simple and filling: migas, açorda, slow-cooked pork with clams, and sheep's cheese with wines from the surrounding estates. Dinner is late by northern standards, and many kitchens close in the afternoon.
Arrive in the early evening, when the heat softens, the stone of the old walls turns golden and the cafés fill.
- Lisbon finish