Eat Posta Mirandesa, the protected-origin beef of the Mirandesa breed, in Miranda do Douro

Try alheira, the smoked sausage of Mirandela, in the town where it is made

Taste the olive oil of Trás-os-Montes in Valpaços, a protected-origin oil

Eat folar, the Easter meat bread of Valpaços, at a bakery in the town

Experience the unique flavors of Portugal's remote northeast

Trás-os-Montes Culinary Journey

Walk to Rio de Onor, the schist village on the Spanish border in Montesinho Natural Park, created in 1979 and home to one of the Iberian Peninsula's most important wolf populations

Follow a Montesinho trail looking for wolf tracks, with a local guide if you can

Look for golden eagles above the park's oak and chestnut slopes

Visit the Biological Park of Vinhais on the park's edge

Observe diverse wildlife in one of Portugal's largest protected areas

Montesinho Natural Park Wildlife Watching

Climb to the keep of the 15th-century castle for the view over both rivers

Walk the walled village and work out that the roofs and the walls are the same slate

Work out why a frontier town was needed here and who it was facing

Drive up to the Lago de Sanabria, which is a short way up the valley

Go on into the Sierra Segundera, which runs into the Portuguese Montesinho

Puebla de Sanabria stands on a hill where the Tera and the Castro meet, with a 15th-century castle of the counts of Benavente on the highest point and a walled village of stone and slate below it — one of the best-preserved in this corner of Zamora, right against the Portuguese border. It was a frontier town for centuries and it looks like one. The Lago de Sanabria is a short drive up the valley, and the Sierra Segundera behind it runs into the Portuguese Montesinho.

Puebla de Sanabria: A Castle Over Two Rivers

Visit the Morais Massif, the ophiolite complex in the Terras de Cavaleiros UNESCO Global Geopark, where ocean floor rock was pushed up onto land

Swim at the Azibo reservoir's river beach near Macedo de Cavaleiros

Hike the Serra de Bornes above Macedo de Cavaleiros for the view over the Geopark

Walk the Morais rock massif, the ophiolite of Trás-os-Montes, and swim at the Azibo reservoir

Terras de Cavaleiros Geopark: Morais and Azibo

Swim in the largest glacial lake in the Iberian peninsula, which is what it is mainly used for now

Work out the numbers: 3.47 square kilometres, 53 metres deep, cut by a glacier fifteen kilometres long

Find the moraine arcs downstream of the lake, which are the ice's terminal deposits

Look for striations and roches moutonnées on the rock around the shore

Walk up to the Laguna de los Peces above the lake, which is the same glaciation higher up

Sanabria is the largest glacial lake in the Iberian peninsula — 3.47 square kilometres at about a thousand metres, 53 metres deep in its deepest basin, gouged out during the Würm glaciation. The Tera glacier reaching what is now Ribadelago was nearly fifteen kilometres long and over three hundred metres thick, and it picked up the Cárdena and Segundera tongues on the way, which is what gave it the power to dig this hole. The ice went about twelve thousand years ago, apparently quite quickly, leaving hanging valleys, roches moutonnées, striations and concentric moraine arcs downstream.

Lago de Sanabria: A Glacier Left a Lake

Be in position on a ridge before first light with a scope, which is the only way this works

Work out the scale of the reserve: about 70,000 hectares, continuing into Portugal as the Serra de Montesinho

Learn to read the ground — tracks, scat and kill sites tell you more in a morning than an evening of looking

Listen at dusk, because you are far more likely to hear wolves than to see them

Talk to the local shepherds about what living alongside the population actually involves

Look for red and roe deer as well — the wolves are here because the prey is

The Sierra de la Culebra runs across north-west Zamora to the Portuguese border, where it continues as the Serra de Montesinho — roughly 70,000 hectares, of which 61,305 are a Site of Community Importance and 67,340 a Regional Hunting Reserve. The tops barely clear a thousand metres, with Peña Mira the highest at 1,241. It holds one of the densest Iberian wolf populations in western Europe, and it is the most reliable place on the continent to see a wild wolf — which still means being on a ridge before dawn with a scope and a good deal of patience.

Sierra de la Culebra: Wolf Country

Hear the Mirandese language, which became a co-official language of Portugal in 1999 and is spoken by some 10,000 to 15,000 people, in Miranda do Douro

Watch the Pauliteiros de Miranda, the stick dancers, perform the Mirandese dance

Visit Miranda do Douro Cathedral, the Renaissance cathedral of the town made a city and diocese in 1545

Discover Portugal's second official language and its unique culture

Mirandese Culture and Language Exploration

At the Côa Museum (MAAC) in Foz Côa, study the scale model of the valley's three accessible sites — Canada do Inferno, Penascosa, and Ribeira de Piscos — and read the account of the 1992 discovery during EDP dam survey work and the UNESCO-backed campaign that cancelled the dam in November 1995

Take the guided jeep tour to the Penascosa site on the west bank of the Côa and identify the horse engravings carved in profile on the schist rockface — these are a defining motif of Magdalenian art, dated approximately 16,000 years ago

At Canada do Inferno, identify at least three of the animal species engraved on the river-facing panels: horses, aurochs (the extinct ancestor of domestic cattle), and caprines — the same fauna that would have been visible from this riverbank 20,000 years ago

Photograph an aurochs engraving at close range with a person in frame for scale — the aurochs became extinct in 1627, but when these carvings were made it was the dominant large herbivore of southern Europe

The Côa Valley contains over 1,000 open-air engravings carved between 22,000 and 10,000 years ago — the largest concentration of Palaeolithic rock art in the world. The site was saved from permanent flooding in November 1995 when a planned EDP dam was cancelled after the engravings were discovered during survey work in 1992.

Côa Valley: The Stone-Age Gallery

Go into Livraria Lello, the neo-Gothic bookshop of 1906

Tour a Port wine cellar in Vila Nova de Gaia, across the Douro from the Ribeira

Walk the Ribeira district, part of the UNESCO-listed historic centre of Porto

Climb the Clérigos Tower, Nicolau Nasoni's tower of 1763

Walk across the upper deck of the Dom Luís I Bridge, the iron bridge of 1886

Discover the vibrant city of Porto and its unique culture