The shop under the pine: Venda do Pinheiro

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Venda do Pinheiro lies in the municipality of Mafra. No official document explains its name, but local oral tradition, as told by the parish council, says it comes from a "venda", a small village shop, that stood in the shade of a stone pine in the middle of the village, on the right-hand side of the road to Lisbon. It became famous because a butcher would sometimes hang beef from the branches of that pine, a rare thing to buy at the time, and word would spread: "let's go to the venda do pinheiro". The pine woods around the village were behind the so-called "good air" that drew many outsiders here between the 1940s and the 1960s, some of whom settled for good. Venda do Pinheiro became a parish in its own right in 1985, when it was separated from the parish of Milharado, and in 2013 it was joined with neighbouring Santo Estêvão das Galés to form a single parish union. A law of 2025 raised Venda do Pinheiro to the status of town (vila). Next door in Santo Estêvão das Galés, a local legend tells how the image of Saint Stephen kept vanishing from the valley and reappearing on the hilltop where the church now stands, and how the stones thrown at it turned into bread. That legend lives on in the Festa dos Merendeiros, held every 26 December, when merendeiro bread is offered to the faithful at the saint's day service. A Roman tomb found at Monfirre shows the Roman presence in the area between the 1st and 5th centuries AD.

Craft beer in Venda do Pinheiro is still a rare find, which makes tracking down a local glass part of the adventure. After a day of country air, village legends and old pine-shaded streets, ask around for something freshly brewed.