Ancient Olive Groves E-MTB Climb: Nazaré to Santa Rita de Cós

Most riders who book a tour out of Nazaré never make it east of the highway. This one does. Fifty kilometres and 900 metres of climbing on an Orbea Wild eMTB, threading through olive groves older than the country itself to a hilltop chapel almost no one outside the parish has heard of.

Out of town, into the back country

You roll out from Nazaré along the old fishermen's road, climb past Pederneira on the way to Famalicão, and the coast falls away behind you. Traffic thins, then disappears. The route from here is mostly farm tracks and forestry roads. Packed limestone. Red clay where it's been wet, a few short tarmac stretches between hamlets. The Bosch Performance CX motor underneath you handles the gradient. What you bring is the bike-handling for the technical descents on the way back.

The olive groves above Cós

Around the 18-kilometre mark the route lifts into the olive country above Cós. Some of these trees pre-date Portugal. Pollarded, hollow-trunked, still producing. In late September the harvest is on and you'll smell the press before you see it: green, grassy, faintly bitter, the regional oil heavy with the polyphenols this limestone soil produces. The villages here — Maiorga, Casal de Santa Catarina, a string of unsigned hamlets in between — are working farms first and tourist routes a distant second. Lunch, if the timing is right, happens at a tasca where the dish of the day is whatever the cook bought that morning.

Santa Rita on the hill

The final climb to the Santa Rita is the one your legs will remember. Under three kilometres, but the gradient stays above 9% for most of it and the surface is loose in places. The reward is the small Gothic-Baroque church on the hilltop, founded in the 13th century when this ridge was an important religious crossroads between Alcobaça and Leiria. It's still a working parish church, opened by the keyholder rather than a ticket office, and on most days you'll have the courtyard to yourself. The view from the porch reaches west to the Atlantic and east into the limestone country of the Serra dos Candeeiros.

The forest descent

The return runs through cork oak, eucalyptus and maritime pine. The standard Estremadura forestry mix, except the trails are not standard. Roots, embedded limestone, two or three drop-ins steep enough that the guide will point them out before you commit. This is where the e-MTB stops being a climbing aid and becomes a descending tool. The extra weight stays planted. If you've ridden technical singletrack in the last year you'll be fine. If you haven't, say so at the briefing and the guide will pick the cleaner B-line.

When to go

Spring and autumn are best. April and May the gorse is in flower across the hills, the trails are tacky after the winter rain, and the climb stays cool. October mornings the valley below Pederneira fills with mist and you ride out of it into clear sun around the 200m contour. July and August are rideable, though the climb to Santa Rita in midday sun is harder than the numbers suggest. Start early. The bike runs a 650Wh battery in Eco-Tour mode and the guide carries the tools and spares for the day. Private group, the pace and the lunch stop adapt to the riders. The guide is a local who has ridden this loop in every season.