Coast to Sanctuary: 105km Nazaré to Fátima Bike Pilgrimage

Who this tour is for

This is the longest and most demanding day in the Irondeer programme. 108 kilometres and 1,580 metres of climbing through the limestone mountains of central Portugal is a full endurance effort regardless of which bike you are on. You should be comfortable on the bike for seven to eight hours and have recent distance in your legs. This is not the right tour for your first day on a bike in six months.

Three bike categories work on this route. The e-MTB is the recommended choice for most riders - the Wild FS H20 or the Rise H15 handle the gravel connectors through the pines and the mountain terrain equally well, and the motor makes the climbing honest rather than punishing. The Alma M50 hardtail MTB is available for riders who want no motor; at this distance and elevation it is a serious athletic undertaking and the guide will discuss it with you before confirming.

All e-bike departures ride in Eco mode for the full route. The battery needs to last 108 kilometres. On the steepest pitch in the Serra de Aire the guide may call one step up in assist for the group - that is the single planned exception. Riders who push into higher modes on the early climbs run out of assist in the mountains.

This is a private guided ride. One group, one guide, one day.

Leaving the coast behind

The route starts in Fanhais and heads east into the Alcoa valley. Within fifteen minutes the Atlantic is behind you and the pine forest opens into farmland. The noise of the ocean fades inside ten minutes from the top of the first ridge. This is the easy part of the day - valley floor, gentle gradient, legs warming up. Save the legs. The mountains start at kilometre 20 and do not stop until kilometre 50.

The Cistercian belt - Alcobaça and Aljubarrota

The valley between km5 and km15 is the agricultural plain the Cistercian monks of Alcobaça built over eight centuries. The monastery is an optional stop depending on start time and the group's pace - a pilgrimage route that passes 3 kilometres from the Alcobaça church and skips it loses something, but the day is long. After Alcobaça the road lifts through Aljubarrota, site of the 1385 battle that secured Portuguese independence from Castile. The castle of Porto de Mós is visible on the ridge ahead - the same castle that housed João I and Nuno Álvares Pereira the night before that battle.

Porto de Mós

The Castle of Porto de Mós sits above the town on a hill, built on the ruins of a Roman lookout post - originally an Arab fortress taken by Afonso Henriques in 1148, then rebuilt in stone by Sancho I around 1200. In 1385 it housed the troops of João I and Nuno Álvares Pereira in the nights before the Battle of Aljubarrota, where the strategies that gave Portugal its definitive independence were planned. After the battle, the castle passed to Nuno Álvares Pereira's grandson Afonso, who transformed the medieval fortress into a palatial residence - one of the most important examples of Renaissance influence in 15th-century Portuguese architecture. The route passes through the town at kilometre 40. This is the last major settlement before the Serra de Aire.

The Serra de Aire e Candeeiros

From Porto de Mós the road climbs into the Parque Natural das Serras de Aire e Candeeiros. The landscape changes immediately - limestone karst, scrub oak, dry stone walls, no shade. The route reaches 446 metres between km45 and km50, the highest point of the day. In summer the rock radiates heat back at the rider. In spring the plateau carries wildflowers. The Serra de Aire is also where the world's longest known sauropod trackway was found in 1994 - fossilised dinosaur prints in the same Jurassic limestone that surfaces along the coast near Nazaré. The mountains and the cliffs at Pedra do Ouro are the same rock, separated by 50 kilometres.

Fátima

The descent off the Serra brings the route into Cova da Iria - the field outside Fátima where three shepherd children reported Marian apparitions beginning 13 May 1917. The sanctuary that grew around the site is now one of the largest Catholic pilgrimage destinations in the world, with a plaza built for 300,000 people. You arrive by bike, legs carrying 1,000 metres of climbing, from the direction the pilgrims on foot have always come - out of the interior. The guide leaves the group to walk the plaza at their own pace. The two basilicas, the Chapel of the Apparitions, the candle wall. Then a meal in the town.

The return to Nazaré

The route back does not retrace the morning. It swings north through the mountains before descending west toward the coast - different ridgelines, different terrain, the Atlantic appearing on the horizon from the high points of the return. The final 30 kilometres drop steadily from the limestone plateau back through the pine and dune country of the Pinhal de Leiria. The route closes as a full loop, finishing in Fanhais where it started. By then the legs have covered 108 kilometres and climbed 1,580 metres.