Vale Pisão sits at Água Longa, near Santo Tirso, about ten minutes north of Porto. Opened in 2009 and designed by the Portuguese architect Jorge Santana da Silva, the course was built to follow the natural contours of the land, working with its slopes, vegetation and water rather than reshaping them.

It's a nine-hole course, played as two rounds for a full round of par 74, with a genuine mix of character from hole to hole. Shorter holes bring clear strategy and visual appeal, while the more demanding holes ask more of your shot-making, giving the round real variety rather than nine holes that all play the same way. A practice field alongside the course gives you somewhere to warm up before you start.

For golfers based around Porto who want a course close to the city without the crowds of the coastal names, Vale Pisão offers a genuinely varied, naturally routed test worth building into a northern Portugal golf break.