The Douro Valley: Chanceleiros

From Pinhão the road winds giddily up the hillside for five km, eventually reaching the hamlet of Chanceleiros. There - upon Paul Hall's kind recommendation - we had booked in to stay the night, at the Casa do Visconde de Chanceleiros. Definitely, our best billet!

We were the only guests, but nothing was too much trouble for the redoubtable Adelaide Lopes and her colleague. Before dinner, Ursula Böcking, the Casa's saviour a decade or more ago, came to chat. We sipped white port with her in the drawing-room after a peaceful walk round the village: lost, we were guided gracefully back onto the road by the couple into whose garden we had strayed.

In the morning after a delicious breakfast, we walked further afield. Mist lay below us; we could hear those working to prune the vines across the valley, smoke curling up from bonfires of the clippings. A fabulous place.

The Douro Valley: speak your weight

The two-and-a-half hour journey from Porto up to Pinhão was hardly the most comfortable of our holiday, but the views - after we joined the Douro - were completely absorbing. Steeply-banked vineyards - a couple of rows of vines on each terraced "shelf" - rise up to a great height above the river. Goodness knows with what effort the grapes eventually arrive at the quintas!

Until half a century ago, the river ran fast, and flat-bottomed rabelos took the full barrels on a perilous journey 100km or more down-stream to Vila Nova de Gaia, across the river from Porto. Now, more prosaically, they travel in tanker trucks; and the river's power is harnessed for hydroelectricity.

It's not just the views that made this excursion worthwhile. Pinhão station is as beautiful as São Bento in its own way, with blue-tiled scenes both front and back. And during the long breather the train takes at Régua, we watched whilst the platform's weighing machine was opened up and given a thorough dusting by a smartly-dressed lady. Then there arrived the expert, whom we took to be her father, with his tools to make the necessary adjustments. Good team work.

Porto: São Bento

From Lisbon, we travelled Northwards, changing trains in Porto before a much-anticipated trip inland, alongside the Douro river. At the main Porto station, we first caught a train to the more central station, São Bento - St. Benedict: appropriate, as our mentors over the next couple of days would - with a single exception - be connections via Ampleforth.

São Bento station took first prize of any we passed through on our 36-train journey: it is lined with around 20,000 tiles, portraying episodes in Portuguese history including the 12th Century battle against the Spanish at Arcos de Valdevez. Worth the detour!