mountains

Navigating the high slopes of Portugal’s Serra da Estrela in midwinter requires serious negotiation with the elements, but my guide, João Pedro Sousa, makes it look simple. Angling his lean frame into the wind, he digs his plastic snow-shoes into a steep drift and pauses, scanning the white ridgeline. He’s looking for mariolas – small cairns of rocks, fused by ice, that will indicate our onward trail. “The landscape changes every day so you have to learn how to read it afresh,” he says, setting off again. “At this time of year, nature is a true artist.”

I plod inelegantly in his wake, still clumsy in the frames clipped to my boots to keep me from sinking into the powder. At a quartzite outcrop rippled with rose and amber, we pause and drink in the view. Below us, cupped in the glacial scar of the Zêzere valley, is the terracotta-roofed town of Manteigas – founded in the 12th century and today the modest hub for tourism in the region. Ahead, on the horizon, João Pedro points out mainland Portugal’s highest peak, the 1,993-metre Torre, home to a small ski resort suited to beginners. “This region is full of surprises,” he grins.

As head of activities for Casa das Penhas Douradas, a design-led hotel created in 2006 and inspired by Alpine lodges, João Pedro leads treks through the massif in all seasons. More than 100 miles of trails extend from the property, following old shepherd paths into pine forests, around lagoons and across barren passes stacked with huge granite boulders – the remnants of the last ice age, scattered like a giant’s abandoned toys. This is wild country – recognised in 2020 by Unesco as a global geopark for its remarkable biodiversity and geology – but the human story is equally rich.

The hotel is a renovated 100-year-old sanatorium, its 17 birch-panelled rooms and suites gazing eastwards to the rising sun. All have vast sliding windows and doors to let in the curative mountain air during the milder months. Down the main corridor, leading from one log fire-warmed sitting room to another, a gallery of sepia photographs remembers the pioneering 1881 expedition by the Lisbon Geographic Society to this high plateau, looking for a place to treat the scourge of tuberculosis.

“The refined air, pure water and protein-rich diet here worked wonders for patients. For a period at the start of the 20th century, this was Portugal’s answer to the Swiss health resorts of St Moritz or Davos,” João Pedro tells me when we are back at the lodge, warming up with apple cake and carqueja mountain tea. The chalets peppering the surrounding slopes certainly look as if they have been plucked from northern Europe, with steep roofs, sunrooms and occasional fairytale flourishes, like finials or turrets. “Built from stone, not timber, though,” João Pedro clarifies. “The style is mixed with our Lusitanian mountain architecture.”

For the rest of my stay, the Serra is a violently shaken snow globe, the whiteout preventing safe hiking and forcing a thorough exploration of the hotel instead. I shuffle between the indoor sauna and bath-temperature swimming pool; seek out the resident masseuse for a thoroughly undeserved sports massage; and indulge in a series of three-course meals where I sample the region’s famous Iberian pork – always tender and expertly sauced. Afternoons are seen out with a glass of port and a well-thumbed tome on mountaineering from the library, a lived-in space charmingly decorated with antique skiing paraphernalia. The pièce de résistance of the property? The Nordic-style wooden hot tub, which I book for a late-night soak after the storm subsides, the stars winking down at me through spindrift and steam.

As well as injecting some panache into the local tourism scene, I discover the founders of the hotel have been pivotal in saving a dying mountain craft: burel fabric, a thick, water-resistant weave made from bordaleira sheep’s wool and used for shepherds’ capes since the middle ages. “I fell in love with the local material when creating the upholstery for the hotel – it’s amazingly tough and versatile,” owner Isabel Costa tells me, as we tour her warehouse of whirring antique looms on the outskirts of Manteigas. “Nine textile mills had already gone out of business when this one closed – I knew we had to buy it.”

In 2010, the mill reopened as the Burel Factory, with a fresh directive: vibrant colours, modern designs and new applications as tactile wall art and furniture coverings, as well as fashion. Isabel was able to rehire experienced artisans, who in turn trained a new generation of craftspeople. I meet some of them in the Room of Light, where workers stand before great windows reeling bolts of cloth to check for skipped stitches. “Generations of Manteigas women have worked in this business,” seamstress Marta Neves tells me. “It’s delicate work, and with the quantity of bespoke commissions now coming in, every day is different.”

Owing to the success of her initial projects, Isabel was able to expand further, opening the town’s first five-star hotel in 2018, Casa de São Lourenço, with a third property currently in the works. The fabric of local life has been rewoven in the process: with expanding job opportunities, young people are choosing to stay and build lives. The local school has even reopened. Today, burel shops sit on Lisbon and Porto’s most upmarket thoroughfares, popularising a native art form – and a destination – long overlooked. “It was my husband who first fell in love with Manteigas. The nature, the people – it’s like nowhere else in Portugal,” Isabel says.

I stay on in the small town itself, checking into Casa das Obras, a time-warp mansion that has been in the noble Ribeiro de Portugal family since its construction between 1770 and 1825, serving as a guesthouse for the past two decades. Here, history is palpable. Stern-looking ancestors of the current owner, Maria Amélia, look down from oil paintings lining the monumental stone staircase. Lower chambers include a tapestried billiards room and bar, while the upstairs breakfast room – a living museum of antiques, trinkets and heavy drapes – boasts original ceiling art. The bedrooms are underwhelming in comparison, but there’s a pretty garden blooming with camellias, and the location is unbeatably central.

Not that there’s too much of Manteigas to explore. One twisting lane of commerce offers up a souvenir shop stacked with knitted socks and wool slippers; a bakery famous for creating the town’s signature sweet treat, the syrupy pastel de feijoca; and a couple of delis selling wheels of creamy Serra de Estrela sheep’s cheese. The great treasure of the town is its looks, its cobbled streets and snow-dusted churches framed in all directions by dramatic valleys and forested peaks, all seemingly ripped from a storybook.

Come summer, the community will be humming with hikers and adrenaline junkies – biking, paragliding, climbing and ATV buggy rides can all be organised here, with information at the little tourist office. But for now, during its coldest months, Manteigas insists on visitors slowing down – filling their lungs with crisp air, lining their stomachs with hearty cuisine and exploring scenic mountain trails when Mother Nature allows.

The trip was supported by Casa das Penhas Douradas, where rooms start at €189 B&B, including guided hikes and a tour of the Burel Factory. Rooms at Casa das Obras start at €55 B&B. Manteigas can be reached via taxi (30min) or twice-daily bus from the town of Belmonte, which is connected to Lisbon by direct train (3h 50min).