We spent our last few days in Portugal in the remote Montesinho National Park, in the isolated north eastern corner of Portugal, just near the capital city of Tras os Montes province, Braganca. We explored the castle, medieval citadel and art galleries of Braganca and also drove to explore remote villages in the park itself. Literally “behind the mountains” Tras os Montes is remote and empty, the few villages in the park protected from further development and communities living in them still adhering to communal farming – in one, smack bang on the spanish portuguese border, even the bar was run by the villagers as an association with profits ploughed back into the fields. The villages are virtually unchanged since medieval times, many with barns as the downstairs, filled with chickens and cattle and the living quarters upstairs, but sadly many are crumbling and filled by an ageing population, as the young all leave in search of work elsewhere.