If you fancy an alternative to the railways there are a lot of companies providing national and local coach and bus services in Portugal. Only one of these, Rede Nacional de Expressos, perhaps the biggest, has an English language website and offers its own mobile app. Some of them have sites in Portuguese but most don’t and the best way to get information and tickets is to go to your local bus station and ask.

But I’ll use Rede-Expressos as an example to give you some idea of what some of the leading companies offer.

Their national network connects several hundred destinations, mostly with more than one service a day. You can book and reserve seats online or by phone up to 30 days in advance; they have a card scheme to give frequent travellers discounts; virtually all the coaches in the premium fleet are wi-fi enabled; and they allow personal luggage of up to 20kg — you can even take your pets with you under certain conditions.

If you want to practice your Portuguese the other leading companies online are: Rodoviária do Tejo, RENEX, and Rodonorte.

Remember, rural Portugal is sparsely populated and so the bus services there are very sparse as well.

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