The slowest train in Portugal is also the best

The regional train from São Bento to Pinhão takes two and a half hours to cover about 120 kilometres, which works out at roughly the speed of a determined cyclist. For the first hour it is a suburban train. Then, at Régua, the river appears on the right, and nobody on the train says anything for a while.

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The vineyards come down to the water in terraces, hundreds of them, built by hand over three centuries, each one holding up a row of vines like a shelf in an enormous green bookcase. The river is wide and slow and the colour of a wine bottle. Pip looked at it for a long time and said bath, and then fell asleep, which is the highest compliment she pays.

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What we did

Very little, beautifully. We took a rabelo boat up the river for an hour, past quintas whose names are on bottles in every supermarket in Britain. We walked between the vines in the early evening, when the light goes gold and the swallows come out. We drank the port, a ten-year tawny that tasted like Christmas cake and good decisions.

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Douro line times (CP)