Mata do Desterro - River Alva Walk

We have had three frosty nights in a row. But today it hasn't been the usual endless sunshine we have come to expect following a frost. It's rather overcast and cool, and the forecast suggests that there is a high chance of rain by 1600 hours.

It's now 1530 hours and we have not long lit the wood burning stove. The landlady came over today to sweep the chimney earlier, so hopefully the stove will burn more efficiently. When the stove gets stoked up it puffs smoke back into the room so you have to open all the windows and doors. Last night we just gave up on it as no matter what we did the fire just languished, there was no heat, and the radiators failed to warm up. Even Twig is cold. She tries to get on your lap to warm herself through and it's a bit difficult to type with a laptop and a cat on your lap!

Yesterday we were out walking again, and at the risk of being repetitive, we chose a walk that ran through the Mata do Desterro again (circular route from Senhora do Desterro), but this time the walk continued up into the valley and then ran back down above the River Alva.



It's hard to believe that the water in this river, unless it gets diverted in the meantime, will run past the cottage we are renting (about 20 miles away).

It was fantastic weather, the sunshine was wonderful. We had calibrated the map of the walk onto the gps and though there was a discrepancy of about 20 feet, it served us well. The only problem we had was near the end of the walk where we had to cross a water course that forms part of the hydroelectro works. The path across the water course was blocked by a locked gate. We have notified the site in the hope that they will rework the route so that it prevents others experiencing the same problem. This walk (12km) and other "Percurso Pedestre" are at the Turismo Guarda.pt site. The link also provides routes for cars. As our Portugese is still "muito pobre" we use Babel Fish to translate either words, sentences, paragraphs, or the entire Web page.

Caminho do Xisto da Benfeita - Way of the Shale of the Benfeita

Friday was a perfect day for a walk. Not too hot (forecast max 14 degrees celsius) no rain, and clear. We set off from Benfeita, walked uphill for about 3 miles to a small mountain village called Sardal, and then it was mostly downhill past Fraga da Pena (waterfalls and picnic area) through Pardieros (another small mountain village) - stopping for a coffee at a local bar - and then the final leg down through a valley back to Benfeita. The walk is one of the aldeias walks, and is quite well signposted, though a few times we couldn't see the markers and plumped for what we hoped was the right way. Fortunately we were right most of the time. We did have the gpx track provided and used that to confirm our passage using our new gps. We had also calibrated in Google Earth the basic map of this walk (NB: at the time of writing the map is only obtainable at the start of the walk itself - we'd been through Benfeita a few times and took a photo of the map board). One of the real problems we have been having is there are no detailed maps apart from military maps - the price of the maps is not cheap). There are plenty of walks, it seems, but you seem to have to pay for a guide to take you out to know where most of them are. The walk we did yesterday would have cost us 25 euros each, and that didn't include lunch or travelling to the starting point.



The walk is about 10km in total, and takes you through current and abandoned agricultural landscape, past ruined schist villages, countless waterfalls, and woodland. At a leisurely pace, stopping for taking photos and having a snack, it took us about 5 hours. Apart from when we stopped for a coffee, the only people we saw were two Portugese villagers harvesting olives.

It felt such a privilege to be able to wander this area freely. It was like stepping into a secret garden on a mega scale. Almost every turn had another nook, cranny, wonderful view, gushing stream or waterfall. The floor was strewn with many different varieties of mushrooms, fallen chestnuts, walnuts, and fruit. Sometimes the path was vivid red with the fallen medronho berries from the Strawberry Tree.

3 December 2009 - Additional Note: This site has a little more information about the Benfeita walk and some information about Piodao.