To many people, the Beiras region of central Portugal is the most quintessential part of the country, a land of vineyards and fortress towns characterising the area with long sandy beaches embroidering its extensive Atlantic coastline.
There’s a feeling in some parts of Portugal that bread is sacred – ‘pão é sagrado’, they say – and that it sustains life like the wafer taken at Communion.
Roughly rectangular in shape and with a population of around ten million people, Portugal has much to offer the modern visitor – young and old alike.