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.

“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”.