Hi all,
I am heading to Portugal (Lisbon, Porto, Douro Valley) in July and am looking for advice/experience on riding XC there. I will not be bringing my bike and looking for good xc tour companies to rent a bike/guide from. Also, any input on which trails to ride!
Thanks for any help!
hey, I don’t have any advice specific to XC riding there, but I was over there last summer and did my bike rental from this place https://www.cycling-rentals.com/ They were easy to work with, the bike itself (a fuji sportif) was definitely well worn but perfectly functional for what I did with it (some climbs up a mountain near my parents’ house there and a granfondo). I’m not a MTB expert, but they appear to just have a lower end hardtail.
I think there’s some good XC riding where my family is originally from (tras-of-montes region right on the border of Spain) but I’m pretty clueless on most things MTB related.
Hope you have fun, it’s a great place, and would be happy to give you some recommendations of a couple of places we stayed at in Lisbon and the Douro Valley.
Thanks @hubcyclist!
I also saw good reviews on TripAdvisor for this MTB company: https://www.weride.pt/
We are looking at staying at Six Senses in Douro Valley? Do you know that hotel? Yes, would appreciate any recommendations!
Cannot help much about good trails outside Lisbon region.
If you stay for a few days in central Lisbon the obvious choice is Monsanto. It is a forest park very close to the city center where you can find a lot of ondulating trails with a wide range of technical levels.
You can commute to Monsanto quite easily from almost anywhere in center Lisbon. It takes you 30 minutes in the worst case.
I used to live just 10 minutes away and, from spring to autumn, II went there to train almost daily.
When it is wet, be ready to indulge yourself with a nice clay based skin treatment. 
When we did an overnight in Douro Valley we stayed in the town Peso da Regua at the Original Douro Hotel, it’s a pretty new hotel (opened last year) and it’s a beautifully renovated old building.
In Lisbon we stayed at the Torel Palace, another relatively new place and it was another exceptional hotel. We would most definitely stay there again.
What I would not recommend would be the full Douro river cruise from Regua to Porto, we did it, and it was way too long, once you get past the main vineyards in the region is gets boring and starts to drag on.
Now I want to head back over and spend more than just a couple of weeks!