Northern Alentejo in the MGA from Vintage Tours

Five nights through the central Alentejo, self-guided, in an MGA Roadster.

The Alentejo is a third of Portugal and holds a tiny fraction of its population, which is what makes it good driving country: long straight roads through cork oak and olive, whitewashed villages and almost nothing coming the other way.

Estremoz anchors the early part of the route, a historic market town with its castle on a hill above it and the marble quarries nearby. Elvas follows on the border, a fortress town with the most extensive seventeenth-century bulwarked fortifications anywhere and the Amoreira Aqueduct running into it, begun at the end of the fifteenth century and finished more than a hundred years later in the Roman manner, standing several tiers high across the valley. Evora comes next, with its world heritage centre, the Roman temple and the cathedral. Whitewashed villages punctuate the rest, and the food along the way is the regional one: bread-based stews, pork and the heavy local reds.

The MGA for the duration, the accommodation and the group meals featuring Alentejo cooking are all included. The price shown is per person. Spring and autumn are the seasons, since the Alentejo in July and August regularly passes forty degrees and an open car is no shelter. Six days of this is a gentle tour rather than a driving challenge, and the region’s emptiness is the whole appeal. Elvas and Estremoz are both worth an evening on foot as well as a morning behind the wheel, and the marble in that corner of the country turns up in everything from kerbstones to church floors.