My culinary adventure on the Lisbon coast
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The elegant towns of Cascais, Estoril and Sintra have plenty to offer, from romantic royal palaces to the best of Portuguese cuisine. On a blue-sky Saturday morning, I joined a foraging hike in Sintra-Cascais nature park, a former municipal wasteland and now thriving ecosystem on the outskirts of Cascais in Portugal. Progress was deliciously slow, thanks to our passionate guide – ecologist Fernanda Botelho, Portugal’s foremost herbalist and wild forager. We’d barely made it out of the park’s welcome centre when she lunged at a bush and held a spiky leaf ahoy.
![[Monserrate Palace, a Moorish Revival villa.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/312d15f7cdcb7162da0d66f46e2203649fe993de/0_298_6000_3600/master/6000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
“Sow thistle,” she proclaimed. “Pigs love it. It’s good for salads, but it too often gets confused with the dandelion.” Everything has its uses, she said, from pine needles for sauces and honey to ash trees for flour and berries of the Peruvian Pink Pepper tree – “planted as an ornamental tree, but it combines very well with chocolate”.
![[Feel the heat: the Chefs on Fire festival.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/fc9de2d7c3e386d7d88aadd085016601aac4a924/0_640_3054_3817/master/3054.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Sintra-Cascais nature park is home to wild horses and deer, 15 hiking trails, including the West Route, a three-day hike (with optional glamping) up to the Sintra mountains. Nippers can ride on a brown, cuddly, cute-as (and, sadly) endangered Miranda donkey. You can also pick organic veg at Pasão Farm, a 380-hectare eco community farm. As someone who can recognise a Brussels-sprout tower but very little else in the edible wild, I think doing so might help with that 30-plants-a-week health malarkey back home.
![[Popular with locals: Marisco na Praça restaurant.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/cf03fc68dd397a6f6d8ac2ca25a36c1ec9ed587b/0_202_5760_3456/master/5760.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
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