Ladies Vintage Tour Through the Green North of Portugal

Five nights through the green north of Portugal, self-guided, in an MGA Roadster, as a women-only tour.

The dinner at Amares is the detail that sells it. The Pousada there is a restored monastery complex, and the group eats in the old refectory with Minho cooking and wine served from the vaults, which is not a thing that can be arranged independently.

Porto opens it with the MGAs introduced, then Guimaraes, a world heritage town and the place Portugal is held to have begun, with lunch in the city. Braga follows, with the oldest cathedral in the country and the Bom Jesus sanctuary and its staircase above the town. The route then runs through the Vinho Verde country, where the wine is drunk young and slightly sparkling, to Amares and the monastery. Peneda-Geres comes next, the only national park in Portugal, with its granite formations, forests and reservoirs, then the River Lima by Ponte da Barca and Ponte de Lima. As with the operator’s other women-only tours, extra wellness time and cultural stops are built in.

The MGA for the duration, the accommodation including the Pousada de Amares, the refectory dinner and the Guimaraes lunch are all included. The price shown is per person. Late spring to early autumn is the window, since the Minho is the wettest part of the country and the car has very little roof. Six days of this is a gentle itinerary built round three good towns, a monastery and a national park, and the Minho back roads between them are narrow, green and almost empty.