I discovered the soul of Portugal in the sun-drenched Douro Valley wine region
The terraced hills of Porto are stacked in vibrant, weather-worn buildings that cascade towards the river's edge, but as we travel from the mouth of Douro towards its source in Spain, I'm surprised by how quickly the hillsides surrender to nature. Soon we are immersed in wilderness and a welcome peacefulness pervades.
As I bask in the bright sun on the top deck, glass of port in hand, I soak up the views of lichen-licked boulders ambling up from the shoreline and towering oak trees reaching skywards. Every so often the tumble of ancient ruins peek out from behind the emerald foliage, conjuring up dreams of running away to restore a home and start life anew.
The river asks nothing of me but pure relaxation and wonder. It's my first-ever river cruise, but already I've fallen happily into its slow and steady tempo. Life on a Douro River cruise is about taking things at a gentler pace, where long lunches, vineyard visits and jaunts to cultural sites on shore replace the rush of the every day. It's a chance to savour the simple pleasures of good wine, fine food and ever-changing views. And the best part? I only have to unpack once after stepping on board.
The meandering Douro River cuts its way through the fertile Douro Valley – one of Portugal's major wine-producing regions and the birthplace of port. In 2024, Portugal's wine industry celebrated one of its best years yet. At the same time, Portugal saw a substantial rise in tourism – the country welcomed a record 30 million visitors last year, generating €27 billion in revenue, with the UK representing the largest source of non-resident overnight stays.
The Douro River plays a key role in the country's thriving tourism sector, with a nearly 11 per cent increase in passenger numbers on river cruises year on year. Porto, the nearest major city to the Douro Valley, is also attracting more visitors than ever, recording 5.9 million overnight stays in 2023, up from 4.8 million in 2022, while 7 million are expected to descend on the city in 2025. Fortunately, not all at once.
I start my river sojourn in Porto, the gateway to the Douro Valley, by checking into the newly renovated Hospes Infantes Sagres. Opened in 1951 as the first five-star hotel in Porto, its halls have hosted luminaries from Bob Dylan to the Dalai Lama and Prince Edward. Now each of its 85 rooms and suites have been lovingly refurbished, along with its public spaces, such as the moody jewel box of a lobby that welcomes guests to sink down into velvet sofas in front of the gilded fireplace. Its restaurant, Scarlett, is a gastronomic gem serving local delicacies – and I swoon for the happy hour special of €1 oysters.
A newer hotel on the Porto scene also worthy of attention is Casa de Companhia, which opened in 2023. A hidden sanctuary within the buzzy heart of Porto, you'd nearly wander past its ornate doors if you didn't know it was there. Yet inside the light-filled courtyard, all is calm – a sensation that's only enhanced by a visit to the hotel's L'Occitane spa for a reviving massage, followed by some time in the indoor pool, sauna and steam room.
My room has an enviable view of the Porto Cathedral, which watches over the city from its hilltop perch. Porto's beguiling blend of architectural styles sees a collision of Baroque, neoclassical and modernist lines. Buildings bear outrageously tall doors and multi-coloured tiled facades – historically speaking, the finer the tiles, the bigger the bank account.
After a few days, I'm ready to trade the hum of the city for the hush of the river. Boarding the Spirit of Chartwell is like stepping back in time to the golden age of cruising. With gleaming joinery and art deco touches, the classic vessel has a bygone glamour befitting royalty, and photos adorning the walls pay homage to the ship's role in Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee in 2012, when Her Majesty was joined on board by Prince Philip, King Charles and Queen Camilla.
Perfectly boutique in size, the ship only takes a maximum of 30 guests, providing a more intimate experience than larger ships that carry a hundred passengers or more. When we pass these relative behemoths on the river, all eyes are on the Spirit of Chartwell, and I can't help but feel a bit smug to be on such a classic beauty.
At the welcome cocktail the first evening, I sample a white port with tonic, a refreshing twist on a G&T. Dining aboard the Spirit of Chartwell is an immersive journey into the roots of Portuguese culinary tradition, from savoury stews to expertly cooked fish, and every night we are tempted by local wines and port to accompany dinner. I've never had a taste for port, but, as I learn, it's because most of us have been drinking it all wrong.
It's a wine that deserves better than being pulled off a dusty bar cart for special occasions. Once opened, port has a shelf life and should be consumed in between one and four weeks, depending on the variety – I shudder to think I've been drinking port past its best, and now, sipping a glass of smooth tawny liquid while taking in the view of the Portuguese countryside, I understand its appeal entirely.
In the morning, I wake up to a scene of green rolling by outside, the hillsides laden in emerald leaves and the jade of the jewel-toned river lapping against the porthole of my comfortable cabin. The scenery slowly transforms with quiet villages and vineyards coming into view. When we transit one of the river's five navigable locks, it's an event in itself, and guests clamour to the top deck to take in the spectacle.
Shore excursions are designed to immerse guests in the Douro Valley's rich cultural and gastronomic heritage. Highlights include a visit to Lamego, where I scale the 686 steps that lead up to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Remedies, passing grand fountains and tiled facades on my ascent. Standing guard over Lamego, the ornately adorned Baroque-style church has an almost mythical feel. We also step ashore for dinner and wine tasting at a traditional 'quinta' wine estate. At night, lively Portuguese folk musicians have us all dancing on board the ship.
For those who want to dip their toes into river cruising or get away for a long-weekend, the three-night cruise on the Spirit of Chartwell is just the ticket. On a longer five-night trip, occasions such as a formal captain's dinner and opening of a vintage port wine opening ceremony add a sense of pomp and circumstance to the voyage. Running April to August, the cruises take in the height of Portugal's warm summers. The Douro Valley is a sun-trap, often warmer than Porto, yet the gentle movement of the ship keeps you from feeling stifled by the heat.
The river has cast its spell on me, and as we make our way back to Porto I realise I'm not quite ready to leave it behind. Instead of rushing back to city life, I extend my stay with a visit to the Six Senses Douro Valley – a riverfront sanctuary nestled among lush gardens. Set within a beautifully restored 19th-century manor house, the hotel is cocooned by terraced vineyards and sun-dappled woodland, with views that spill across the river like a painting come to life.
With a thoughtfully curated menu of activities – from yoga and full moon fire rituals to wine tasting and cooking classes – days here are filled with as much or as little as you please. Mornings begin with the scent of citrus and lavender in the air and end with sunset-soaked glasses of tawny port, and plentiful forest walks, spa treatments and wine tastings at local quintas in between.
Drifting past vineyard-cloaked hills on the Spirit of Chartwell isn't just a holiday, it's a gentle unravelling. Here, the noise of the modern world falls away, replaced by the hush of water lapping against the hull, the rustle of wind through the trees, the ritual of pouring a ruby red glass of port. It's a place where time stretches, thoughts settle and the frantic pace of modern life feels blissfully far away. In this sun-drenched corner of Portugal, stillness isn't something you have to search for – it gently finds you.
Essentials
Douro Azul operates three- and five-night cruises on Spirit of Chartwell from April to August, with prices from £595pp.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
44 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Terrifying Mont Ventoux ready to create the unexpected again in Tour de France
The decades pass, generations of Tour de France cyclists come and go, but some gruesome things never change. On Tuesday, the survivors of one of the craziest, fastest Tours ever, a race with even less respite than usual, will do as their predecessors have done every few years since 1951: they will crest a rise in the road, and see Mont Ventoux on the horizon. A sinking in the heart will accompany the dull ache in the legs: we're off to the Bald Mountain once again. The men of the Tour probably won't be thankful for small mercies, but they should be. Last time the Tour visited, in 2021, although the background scenario was the same – Tadej Pogacar had smashed the race to bits on the first serious climb and was set fair for victory – the organisers cruelly made them go over the 1,910m summit twice, in two different ways. Wout van Aert might recall that with a wry smile: the Belgian was in his prime back then and he won out of a breakaway. The time before that, in 2016, the chaos on the mountain was such that the man who was Pogifying the race that year, Chris Froome, ran part of the way to the finish, which had been moved off the summit due to high winds. Froome might recall that utterly freakish episode with a wry smile from his home in Monaco, but it will be tinged with regret that at 40 he probably won't be racing up the Giant of Provence again. Tempora mutantur, but not the Ventoux. That, partly, reflects one of the key features of the Tour; the way it constantly revisits and rewrites its past in places that have barely changed since the first visit. Go round the partly banked corner at Saint-Estève and on to the virtually straight haul through the oak-wooded lower slopes, and it's essentially the same brutal experience that the stars of the 50s, 60s and 70s might have undergone, perhaps with better tarmac as you go up with barely a hairpin to break the gradient until the final haul across the scree slopes to the top. The Ventoux is a place where stuff happens on the Tour, very little of it good, beginning with Jean Malléjac's near-death in 1955 and continuing with Tom Simpson's dramatic demise in 1967. That event, which I investigated in my 2002 biography of Simpson, Put Me Back on My Bike, remains the mountain's defining moment, lending a note of pilgrimage to every ascent to the desolate waste of wind- and frost-blasted limestone scree on its pointed summit. The generation that raced with Simpson has largely passed on – the death in April of Barry Hoban being a case in point – but the poignancy of his death and the tales around it lose nothing in the telling. Equally memorable, if with a touch of farce, was the Froome fiasco in 2016. Froome slipping and sliding in his stiff-soled carbon shoes and clicking pedal cleats with a huge crowd baying at him was probably the most outlandish event I witnessed in 27 Tours, and the feeling then was that this kind of thing could happen only in one of three places, all equally extreme: the Ventoux, l'Alpe d'Huez, and the rarely visited extinct volcano of Le Puy de Dôme in the Massif Central. After all, it wasn't that long since, in 2000, most of the race infrastructure had had to be left behind due to dangerous, but not freak, high winds, meaning that when Marco Pantani won ahead of Lance Armstrong, the finish felt like a return to the 1970s. Given the extreme physical challenge and the sumptuous television images it provides, it's not surprising that the mountain now hosts the Tour far more often than of old, pretty much matching l'Alpe d'Huez for frequency whereas in the 80s and 90s, one visit per decade was deemed enough. The one major change in recent years concerns not the mountain itself but the area around it. Recently, the newspaper l'Equipe documented how cycling up the Ventoux is now front and centre of the local economy, with more than 90,000 cyclists each year pedalling up its slopes by the most traditional route, the southerly road from Bédoin which opens earlier in the year than the northerly route from Malaucène. On the last two visits I made to the mountain, I'd have expected the slopes to be busy when I rode up one June, but less so on a bitter October day when light snow was falling at the observatory. Cycle cafes, cycle hire businesses and major players in the cycle industry cater for the two-wheeled hordes, far beyond the traditional stop-off point at Chalet Reynard, where the thermometer was reputed to have broken on the boiling day Simpson died. There are three dedicated photographers who make a living from selling photographs to those who ride up each day, turning over €130,000 annually in one case, not to mention the local businesses that feed and accommodate the cyclists plus major mass participation events such as sportives and gran fondos; the strangest, perhaps, being the 'brotherhood of the Ventoux nutters', membership of which goes to those who have ridden up the Ventoux three times in a single day using each of the three different ways to the summit. Given the Tour's constant pursuit of new and televisually interesting challenges, it's probably only a matter of time until the race follows suit.
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Storms, wildfires and heatwaves blast Europe ahead of summer getaways
Europe is in the grip of an unforgiving bout of extreme weather that is battering popular holiday destinations just as British tourists prepare to head abroad for the summer. Searing heatwaves, devastating wildfires and violent storms are sweeping the continent, threatening lives, scorching landscapes and putting emergency services under immense pressure. Tourist hotspots in Italy and Spain are contending with several punishing blazes, with hundreds of firefighters and water-carrying aircraft dispatched to quell the flames. Greek authorities meanwhile are warning residents and holidaymakers to expect a week of hellish warmth, with the mercury expected to peak at 43 degrees Celsius in parts of the country. The Hellenic Meteorological Service issued public health warnings this morning, declaring temperatures would linger between 38 and 40 degrees C today and increase well beyond that throughout the week. Similar temperatures are present throughout Turkey and southern Italy. Elsewhere, France and Germany are facing a contrasting crisis as punishing storms and torrential downpours tear across towns and cities, felling trees, ripping off rooftops and flooding roads. Spain is struggling to quell a series of wildfires that have already burned through 70,000 hectares of land in recent weeks. On Friday, the skies above Madrid turned an ominous shade of orange as the Spanish sunshine illuminated a blanket of smoke drifting across the capital from nearby forest fires. Authorities say more than a dozen localised fires are currently raging, with high temperatures, intense winds and persistent drought having turned the country into a 'powder keg'. Several regions were placed under a very high or high warning level by the Forest Fire Potential Spread Index (FPI) published this morning, with Albacete, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Guadalajara, Toledo and Castilla-La Mancha thought to be under threat. It comes as a fire in Toledo was extinguished overnight. The Italian island of Sicily is also battling six separate wildfires, with soaring temperatures leading authorities to issue red alert warnings for four provinces this week. Sicily's Forestry Corps and Civil Protection workers were engaged all weekend as they worked to extinguish the fires, with six water-dropping aircraft drafted into control the flames. Three of the blazes are located in the northwest in the countryside between the cities of Palermo and Trapani, with two more reported along the south coast and another in the suburbs of the eastern city of Catania. Horrifying images snapped overnight by residents in Trapani showed thick orange flames scything through bone-dry hills on the outskirts of the city. This morning, meteorologists placed the eastern provinces of Catania, Caltanissetta, Enna and Messina under red alert warnings, with emergency services preparing for the prospect of yet more infernos. These warnings come amid an intense heatwave engulfing southern Europe as winds bring subtropical air from northern Africa to southern Italy and Greece, according to meteorologist Giulio Betti. As Spanish and Italian emergency services battle the wildfires, Greek meteorologist Clearchos Marousakis said parts of his nation will experience 43 degrees Celsius heat, and said the mercury could go even higher. Marousakis said the 'ceiling' of this week's heatwave 'is estimated at 41 to 43 degrees Celsius inland'. He added that the heat wave 'will be intense and long-lasting' and will be accompanied by high winds along the coast. Greek emergency services will therefore be on high alert for more wildfires, weeks after Crete and several other parts of the country were overwhelmed by infernos that triggered evacuations of some 5,000 people. Those punishing blazes sparked in the mountains between the villages of Ferma, Achila and Agia Fota on July 1 and were whipped up by powerful gusts. Evacuations were ordered at three sites outside the port of Ierapetra on the island's south coast as the inferno raged out of control overnight and by Wednesday afternoon was threatening to engulf residences and tourist resorts. Around 230 firefighters were dispatched to contain the fires along with 10 water-dropping aircraft to fly regular sorties over Crete, with reinforcements sent from Athens. The president of a hotelier's association told Protothema that 5,000 people - mostly foreign tourists - were moved out of homes and hotels, while dozens were taken to hospital with respiratory issues triggered by thick clouds of smoke and ash. Wildfires have burned more than 227,000 hectares of land in Europe since the beginning of the year, according to the EU's European Forest Fire Information System - far above the average figure for the first six months of the year. It's not yet clear if 2025 will be a record year, as that will depend on how the fire season evolves in the coming months, but the number of fires in Europe has also surged this year so far, with 1,118 blazes detected as of July 8, versus 716 in the same period last year, EFFIS said. Countries are preparing for worse blazes. Warmer-than-average temperatures are forecast across Europe in August, EFFIS said, meaning fire danger will remain high across much of southern and eastern Europe. While Southern Europe is expected to see normal rainfall patterns, the rest of the continent is expected to be drier than normal in August, EFFIS said - potentially exacerbating fire risk in other regions. While Italy, Spain and Greece battle wildfires and scorching heat, residents in France and Germany are facing a very different problem. Brutal storms engulfed much of eastern France over the weekend with one person killed and six more injured amid the violent weather events. The roofs of several houses were torn off in the department of Saone-et-Loire, north of Lyon, such was the intensity of the winds and the lightning storms. One person attempting to make repairs to his roof was killed when he was blown off a ladder, while in nearby Jura, almost 5,000 people were left without power. Another person was seriously injured in Devrouze when he too was blown off a roof, and five more people were hurt in the Alpine department of Savoie when a tree was felled and landed on a car. Meanwhile, the German Weather Service (DWD) this morning issued a string of weather alerts for much of the north and southeast of the country, warning of heavy rainfall and the prospect of flash floods. DWD meteorologists warned residents could expect to see up to 100 litres of rainfall per square metre over a 12-hour period later today, with winds reaching 80 kilometres per hour.
Telegraph
3 hours ago
- Telegraph
Move over, Traitors, the BBC has found its next big reality show: Destination X
If you were bundled into the back of a bus that had the windows blacked out and you were driven across Europe, with no means of communicating with the outside world, would you be able to figure out where you were? Even if you were given obscure clues along the way, and part of a group of 10 trying to come up with the right answer, it would be difficult, to say the least. That is the premise of Destination X, the BBC's new glossy reality TV format. The programme is like a cross between Race Across the World, The Traitors, Hunted and Big Brother. Much of its action takes place on the specially-kitted out coach, ferrying the contestants across the continent. At the end of every episode, each player has two minutes to place an X on the map to mark where they think they are. The player whose guess is furthest away is eliminated; to keep the confusion levels high, the remaining players are not told whose was closest. Rob Brydon, in his reality TV hosting debut, hams it up and chews the scenery throughout. There is more than a hint of Claudia Winkleman's performance in The Traitors in how Brydon does it, from the exaggerated campness to his slightly outré fashion choices – such as his choice of cravats and double-breasted blazers. 'I did look to Claudia,' he says. 'I love the lightness of touch there, I love the way she's a conduit into the show. I didn't want to get in the way of the programme, so I was very aware of that. I wanted to just be a bridge between the viewer and the contestants, because they are the stars. She gets the balance just right: mischievous at times, but always wanting them to have a great experience and to help them along.' To get a taste of the experience, after a screening of the first episode at a cinema in Hoxton, east London, on one of the hottest days of the year a small group of journalists was invited to board the Destination X bus to play a truncated version of the game. As an added bonus, we got to keep quizzing Brydon and Dan Adamson, the show's executive producer, about the series. The coach has been decked out with luxurious green velvet chairs and golden lights hanging on the walls. It feels a little like the Orient Express, or a posh private members' club. It is just a shame that the air conditioning does not seem to be working, and even a consummate professional like Brydon is struggling with the heat. 'Bloody hell, it's hot isn't it?' he asks before he decides to take off his blue suit jacket. 'Is it worth mentioning to the driver that the air conditioning is ineffectual? We are all sitting here like lobsters in a pot. Surely they must be able to make it work?' It only splutters to life in fits and starts over the course of the next hour. As the bus drives off, the windows become frosted and we immediately become deprived of our sense of direction. I am pretty sure that we headed south to start with, but after a few turns it is almost impossible to know where we are. Brydon, 60, says that he would like Destination X to be the kind of programme bringing generations to sit on the sofa together. 'I love that it's for the family,' he continues. 'We would watch Traitors in that way. You could persuade your teenage sons to spend time in your company, which is no mean feat. I'm proud of Would I Lie to You? being something you can watch with your family. I hope this becomes appointment viewing too. If you're anything like me as a parent, you are desperate for the stuff that can persuade them to spend time with you.' The BBC has placed a big bet on Destination X and clearly thinks that the show is going to be its next reality big hit. Like The Traitors, it is a foreign import (Destination X was originally a Belgian format, while the same producers have also made an American version). No expense has been spared: quite apart from the £100,000 winner-takes-all prize, it was filmed across 32 days by a crew of 190 people who travelled more than 11,000km across Europe. As well as the decadent bus we see through most of the episode, there was a second coach following behind that was kitted out with beds for the contestants to sleep in. 'We had the opportunity to turn Europe into a board game. We immediately thought the way we bring scale to the challenges is we just get incredible locations,' says Adamson. 'We take over whole castles, we run a train on a public network, we take over cable car systems.' Not that the combination of a large investment and huge ambition is any guarantee of success. 'You never know with any show – any theatre show, TV show, film, live show – how it's going to go,' says Brydon. 'You'd have to be detached from reality to not have your fingers crossed and hope that people respond to it.' Taking 10 people across Europe in a confined space had some, erm, practical difficulties. 'We set ourselves a rule which gave ourselves one problem: no number twos on the bus,' says Adamson. 'It's about humanity, it's about being kind to each other. We had to create a system.' The system was this: a car pulled a trailer with portable lavatories on the back and, when nature called, the convoy had to find a place to pull over. The contestants getting off the bus had to put on blackout goggles and be chaperoned and walked over, before repeating the process in reverse after they had finished. The contestants themselves were selected for their potential to be good at the game. Among them are Darren (a London taxi driver who took years learning The Knowledge and may be good at instinctively knowing where he is), crime writer Deborah (no stranger to piecing clues together) and Nick (an endurance athlete who has run a marathon in every country on earth and has seen much more of the world than most). For all their abilities at sussing out which clues are helpful, they had bizarre strategies to try and help themselves. One tried to use the sun's arc to figure out in which direction they had travelled, while another counted the seconds that the bus drove in a tunnel to try and ascertain how big the mountain under which they were driving was. The helpfulness of that information is dubious. 'If I got out and saw the sun,' says Brydon, 'that would tell me it's daytime.' Adamson adds: 'It's amazing, when you take someone's senses away, how much they don't know where they are.' Like the show's participants, we have to decide which clues are helpful and which ones are red herrings designed to throw us off the scent; but unlike the contestants, we are all feckless journalists. We are told that our destination is somewhere we all know and will recognise, and that there have been clues all around us since we boarded the bus. 'Film buffs will figure it out,' offers one producer. Seeing how puzzled we are, Brydon laughs and eats sweets picked up from the cinema. He slips into an impression of David Frost: 'The clues are there. As David Frost used to say, the clues are there.' The bus windows defrost as we drive south over London Bridge; a few minutes later we are going back north over Tower Bridge. The frosted windows darken: are we going through a tunnel, or just driving down a road heavily lined with trees? We hear the chimes of Big Ben. Is that a clue? Westminster Bridge was, of course, the iconic setting for the start of 28 Days Later. After what was actually an hour, but through a combination of the heat and sensory deprivation, felt like much more than that, we come to a stop and Brydon continues to play the role of avuncular host. 'I'm so sorry about the temperature. You shouldn't have had to suffer like that,' he says as he points at the sweat stains on his baby blue shirt. 'But look: I suffered too.' As the Gavin & Stacey star departs, the eight of us remaining players are asked to do what the real contestants do and place an X on a map to guess where we are. It is surprisingly stressful, especially as I had not decided what I would do before I sat down in the Big Brother diary room-style area at the back of the bus. Then comes my a-ha moment. I place my X and wait for the result. I was not the one with the worst guess, which in the show would mean I lived to fight another day. But as this is a one-time thing, we get told who was closest, and I am amazed to discover that I have won. The windows of the bus defrosted for the final time and we had our answer. We were back where we had started, at the cinema.
