The Train

The most romantic way to travel through the Douro valley is by train.

The hiss of steel on the rails or prolonged whistles announcing the proximity of a station will awaken us to the greatness of the river, to the grandeur of some farms and their homes, to cut geometric vines, for vertical slopes to the notch of the valleys, to the viewpoint that guesses the horizon.

It is true that the train does not let us see everything, which only returns the fleeting images of the landscape. But this is vertigo that lays one of its greatest fascinations. Soon, we see how the landscape, although marked by a common matrix, established around the culture of the vine, modifying and gaining new shades.

Going from Baixo Corgo, in Régua area, which concentrates the largest number of vineyards in the region, to the Douro Superior, more arid but where there have been some of the best wines; watched the parade from all the elite of farms that populate the both banks of the river, we can follow the flight of ducks or the creeping light whirlwind caused by the jump of a fish, we go changing perspective, look right and left, forward or in reverse the route.

The train follows alongside the river, now heading in the same direction, sometimes cruising destinations, but always fulfilling its role in the sublimation of the Douro landscape.