Guide
Complete Guide to Motorhome Travel in the Alentejo, Portugal
Written by the operator at Alentejo Park
·Updated June 2025
The Alentejo is the largest and least-visited region in Portugal. It covers a third of the country by area but holds less than ten percent of the population. For motorhome travellers, it is the quietest, cheapest, and in many ways most rewarding destination in southern Europe — if you know where to look. This guide covers the practical information for planning a trip: how to get there, where to stop, what to eat, what to pay, and how to combine the Alentejo with a wider Iberian tour.
Where the Alentejo begins
The Alentejo borders the Algarve to the south, the Ribatejo and Setúbal to the north, Spain to the east, and the Atlantic coast to the west (the Alentejo coast, often called the Costa Vicentina, is one of the most dramatic and least touristed in Europe). The main access route from the south is the A2 motorway, which runs from Lisbon all the way to the Algarve border near Almodovar. If you are arriving from Spain, the crossing at Elvas or Badajoz puts you in the upper Alentejo, an hour from Évora. From the Algarve, the A2 takes you north through the transition zone — drier, flatter, with the first cork oaks appearing by the time you reach Almodôvar. Alentejo Park is at this junction: 15 hectares on the Alentejo side of the border, five minutes from the A2.
The landscape and climate
The Alentejo interior is dominated by three things: the cork oak (sobreiro), the holm oak (azinheira), and the rolling plains of the Alentejo plain, locally called the planície. The landscape is big. Roads run straight for tens of kilometres through land that feels empty even when it is not — the farms here are among the largest in Europe, many thousands of hectares of wheat, cork, and olives managed by a handful of people. The climate is extreme by Portuguese standards: summers reach 40°C regularly in the interior, and winters bring genuine cold, with frost common from December to February. The best motorhome travel seasons are April–June and September–October. In July and August, the interior is very hot, but the evenings are long and the roads are empty. In winter the Alentejo empties of tourists and fills with a particular quality of light — low angle, golden, dramatic — that makes it one of the best photography destinations in Europe.
Getting there and moving around
The A2 motorway is the main artery, running the length of Portugal from Lisbon to the Algarve. It is tolled — budget €20–30 for the Lisbon-to-Algarve run. The alternatives are the IP2, which crosses the Alentejo east-west, and the N roads that connect the market towns. For a motorhome, the N roads are the best choice: wide enough for a large vehicle, slow enough to enjoy, and lined with the kind of landscape that is the reason you brought the motorhome in the first place. The IC27 connects the A2 at Almodôvar to Beja, the regional capital, and is an excellent road — 90km of flat, straight driving through cork oak and wheat.
Overnight stopping and aires
The Alentejo is less developed for motorhome stopping than the Algarve. The municipal aires that exist in the Algarve coastal towns are rarer here, and the distances between stops are longer. What exists tends to be genuine: a farm, a quinta, or a licensed stopping place with real facilities. Prices are typically lower than the Algarve — €12–18 per night is common outside peak season. Alentejo Park, near Almodôvar on the A2, offers 12 pitches with full hookup (16A electric, water, sewer) under oak trees, a farm shop with olive oil and honey produced on site, and a dump station. It is the most southerly stopping place on the Alentejo side of the Algarve border. Évora has a municipal area near the Roman temple that works well. Mértola, the beautifully preserved Islamic town on the Guadiana, has a riverside area at the foot of the castle. Beja has a large municipal area that is practical if not scenic.
Évora: the essential stop
Évora is the capital of the Alentejo and one of the best-preserved walled towns in Europe. The Roman temple, the Gothic cathedral, the university, and the bone chapel of the Chapel of Bones are all within a twenty-minute walk of each other inside the walls. The town is on UNESCO's World Heritage list. For motorhomers, the practical note is this: drive to the parking outside the walls (the municipal area is near the bus station), take the afternoon to walk the town, eat at one of the restaurants in the Praça do Giraldo, and spend the night. The town is manageable in half a day but rewards two nights if you want to eat well and visit the surrounding farms and dolmens.
Mértola: the Islamic town
Mértola is the most exceptional small town in the Alentejo, and possibly in Portugal. It sits on a promontory above the confluence of the Guadiana and Oeiras rivers, its white houses stacked up to a Moorish castle at the top. The church inside the castle walls is the only mosque in Portugal that survived the Reconquista as an intact structure — the mihrab (prayer niche) is still visible inside. The town has a small but serious museum of Islamic art. The surrounding countryside is the Guadiana Natural Park: wolves, Iberian lynx (rarely seen but present), black storks, and eagle species that are rare elsewhere in Europe. The aire at Mértola is free, riverside, and has a working dump station. Drive the Guadiana north of Mértola for an hour and you are in some of the quietest landscape in Europe.
Food and wine
Alentejo food is the best regional cuisine in Portugal by most reckonings, and it is almost entirely unknown outside the region. The foundation is bread — migas (bread soaked in olive oil and garlic, with various additions) and açorda (bread soup) are the dishes that appear on every local menu. Pork from the black Iberian pig (porco preto) is the premium ingredient; the animals are raised on acorns from the holm oak forests, which gives the meat a nuttiness and fat content unlike any commercial pork. Lamb and kid from the Serra de Monchique and the plains feature in the slower-cooked dishes. The Alentejo wine is the best in Portugal by volume — the wines from Reguengos de Monsaraz, Vidigueira, and Borba are widely exported, but the estate wines available at quintas and local restaurants are better and cheaper. A bottle of serious Alentejo red from a good producer costs €8–15 at source.
The Alentejo coast
The western edge of the Alentejo — the coast between Sines and the Algarve border at Odeceixe — is protected as the Southwest Alentejo and Costa Vicentina Natural Park. It is the most dramatically beautiful and least developed stretch of Atlantic coast in western Europe. The cliffs are 40–60 metres high, the beaches are backed by dunes and heathland, and there is almost no tourist infrastructure outside the small towns of Porto Covo, Vila Nova de Milfontes, and Zambujeira do Mar. For motorhomers, wild camping on the coast is prohibited within the natural park boundary, which is consistently enforced. There are licensed aires in Vila Nova de Milfontes and Porto Covo that work well. The coast road (N393 and connecting roads) is manageable for a motorhome but narrow in places.
What to budget
The Alentejo is significantly cheaper than the Algarve. A night at a licensed stopping place is €12–18 outside peak season, rising to €18–22 in July and August. Food from local markets costs €12–15 per day for two people. A meal at a local restaurant — not a tourist restaurant, a place where the workers eat — costs €10–12 per person with wine. A 500ml tin of good local olive oil at the producer costs €10–14. The weekly market in Évora and the monthly market at Beja are the best places to buy food, textiles, and practical goods at prices that have not been adjusted for foreign visitors.
Combining the Alentejo with the Algarve
The most natural motorhome tour of southern Portugal starts in the Alentejo and ends in the Algarve, or the reverse. From the A2, the transition happens near Almodôvar, where the landscape shifts from cork oak and planície to limestone and orange groves. A week in the Alentejo followed by a week in the Algarve gives you the full range of southern Portuguese landscape, food, and culture. Alentejo Park sits exactly at this transition — on the Alentejo side of the border, five minutes from the A2, convenient for a first or last night in the region. From here, Mértola is 45 minutes north, Évora is 90 minutes, and Castro Marim in the eastern Algarve is 40 minutes south.
Looking for a place to stop in the eastern Algarve?
Alentejo Park is 5 minutes from the A22 junction at Castro Marim. Twelve pitches, full hookup, free dump station for guests. →