Helena Lee savours an epicurean adventure in Portugal, come rain or shine
THERE WAS A MOMENT AT SÃO LOURENÇO DO BARROCAL WHEN I forgot we were in the 21st century. Sitting surrounded by ancient olive-trees, sipping vinho verde and watching a donkey and cart trundle past, I experienced a flash of pure contentment. The peace offered by this rural sanctuary was luxury itself, I reflected, until I was brought back to reality by the persistent questions from my young children about braying asses.
The first stop on our Portuguese escape had been Lisbon two days before. Moody clouds were gathering overhead, and our taxi driver was full of foreboding. ‘Wear trainers,’ he advised darkly. ‘Lisbon was built on seven hills.’ It was sound counsel; the constant rain rendered the geometric-tiled roads slippery as ice. So we forewent most of the sightseeing in favour of exploring the city’s numerous dining opportunities, lunching on octopus hotdogs, fish and hearty francesinha, a meaty sandwich slathered in rich gravy. Our hotel, the AlmaLusa Baixa/Chiado, was boutique bliss – perfectly situated on the Praça do Município, next to the city hall from which the Portuguese republic was proclaimed – and home to another fantastic restaurant, Delfina. When we weren’t eating, we visited the Oceanarium, next to the pounding Atlantic Ocean, and took a trip up to the castle of São Jorge and the LX factory, an intriguing mix of hipster restaurants and creative endeavour.
Alentejo was a glorious contrast to this urban bustle; two hours’ drive inland, towards the Spanish border, it’s the country’s largest yet least populated region, a place of gently undulating hills, peppered with holm oaks and olive-trees, around which cows and wildhorseshappilyroam.The São Lourenço estate had originally been part of the royal family’s hunting grounds, until it was purchased by Manuel Mendes Papança two centuries ago and converted into a farm. Eight generations later, it is owned by the same family (apart from a brief period during the 1970s when it was nationalised) and is still a working farm and a centre of local craft, as well as a supremely comfortable hotel.
Arriving here was like taking a deep breath. We entered via a cobbled path, fringed with thriving rosemary bushes that ran past the whitewashed converted farm buildings, and sat down to a welcome lunch of fresh tomato soup with a poached egg, followed by prawns in a garlicky butter. Afterwards, the girls wanted to play hide-and-seek, weaving in and out of the orange- and lemon-trees, the disused sheep pens, the former bullring and the dolmens. The way to the pool was past sculptural agricultural hangovers: water mills, cereal towers and industrial pulleys; the pool itself, framed by boulders, was bracing but stimulating.
Everyone we spoke to told us the constant rain was
