Heading up the Lima valley from Ponte de Lima towards Spain, the landscape becomes wilder and more mountainous. Ponte da Barca is a pretty riverside town, and the villages around it, Lindoso and Soajo, are among the most distinctive in Portugal, at the gates of Peneda-Gerês National Park.
Ponte da Barca
The town takes its name from the boat (barca) that once ferried travellers across the Lima, replaced in the fifteenth century by a ten-arched stone bridge, still in use. Along the river are the poets' garden, devoted to the brothers Diogo and Agostinho Bernardes, sixteenth-century poets born here, an old covered market and the pillory. The river beaches are popular in summer.
Lindoso
About thirty kilometres away, near the border, the village of Lindoso is dominated by a thirteenth-century castle, remodelled in the seventeenth century with bastions, now an interpretation centre. At its foot is one of the most photographed sights in the north: some fifty espigueiros, granite granaries raised on pillars and topped with crosses, gathered on a rock threshing floor. They were used to store maize safe from damp and rodents, and some are still in use.
Soajo
In the neighbouring municipality of Arcos de Valdevez, the village of Soajo, on the slopes of the Serra da Peneda, has another famous group of espigueiros, 24 eighteenth and nineteenth-century granaries on a great slab of granite. The village has stone houses, a curious pillory with a stylised face and a long tradition of autonomy: by tradition, its people enjoyed royal privileges forbidding nobles to stay in the village longer than it took a loaf of bread to cool. The surroundings are full of trails, waterfalls and natural pools.
Getting there
Ponte da Barca is about 40 minutes by car from Braga; Lindoso and Soajo are further along mountain roads. Further east begins Gerês territory.