CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
160 km from Vila Nova de Foz Côa to Vila Nova de Foz Côa, about 3 h 03 of riding. It goes by way of Faia - Vale Afonsinho, Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Vall and back through Faia - Vale Afonsinho. It crosses from Portugal into Spain - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 20 km this is Douro Valley N222, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Seen from the roadside, the land around Meijapão looks like nothing much: dry stone walls, almond groves, olive trees and a few low farm buildings spread over a high plateau of schist and granite. It lies a little south of Vila Nova de Foz Côa, in the border country of north-eastern Portugal that people call Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, which translates roughly as behind the mountains. The very ordinariness is part of the charm, because the rock under those fields hides one of the great prehistoric galleries of Europe.
Read the complete Meijapão write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Meijapão is where the day begins. Next is Faia - Vale Afonsinho.
Thirty thousand years ago, give or take, people in this valley scratched horses, aurochs and ibex into the schist rocks along the River Côa, and their drawings would almost certainly have been drowned if a dam had been built here in the 1990s. Instead, after a fierce campaign, the dam was abandoned and the Côa Valley rock art became one of the most important open-air Palaeolithic art sites in the world, listed by UNESCO in 1998 together with Siega Verde across the border in Spain. Faia, in the side valley near Vale Afonsinho, is one of its core sites, with engravings and some rare painted figures on the rock faces above the river.
Read the complete Faia - Vale Afonsinho write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Faia - Vale Afonsinho comes up about 20 km into the recorded legs. Next is Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Vall.
On the Spanish side of the border with Portugal, the river Águeda cuts through granite and schist on its way to the Douro, and on the rock faces along its banks, at Siega Verde, Palaeolithic people engraved horses, aurochs, deer and goats more than ten thousand years ago. In 2010 Siega Verde was added to the Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Valley, the Portuguese World Heritage Site just across the border, recognising that these open-air engravings form one of the largest collections of Ice Age art in the world.
Read the complete Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Vall write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 79 km into the recorded legs you reach Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Vall. Next is back through Faia - Vale Afonsinho.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Faia - Vale Afonsinho write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Faia - Vale Afonsinho, late in the day. Next is Meijapão.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Meijapão write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Meijapão. That is the ride.
Meijapão → Faia - Vale Afonsinho is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Faia - Vale Afonsinho → Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Vall is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Vall → back through Faia - Vale Afonsinho is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Faia - Vale Afonsinho → Meijapão is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.