PR3 Trilho dos Caminhos de Água

Resuming the route and going up the Serra, you will come across two dolmens from the megalithic set of Serra da Aboboreira. The first, called Furnas 2, is located on a small elevation, with wide visibility from it, observing Serra do Marão to the north and northeast. It is a closed dolmen, which integrates the first moment of construction of this type of monuments in the Serra da Aboboreira: between the end of the 5th and beginning of the 4th millennium BC The second, Meninas do Crasto 3, integrates a second constructive moment that occurred at the beginning of the fourth millennium BC. The modest dimensions and the roof slab give this monument a certain grace.

Ahead you come across the “Pedra do Sol”, a granitic batholith that, being isolated, works naturally like a sundial. This factor will certainly have influenced the name given to it by the shepherds of Serra da Aboboreira.

Places of mandatory visit, along the route, are the rural mountain clusters - Aldeia Velha, Aldeia Nova, Pé Redondo - singular expression of the population at altitude, of concentrated pattern that contrasts with the dissemination in small places typical of the lowlands. They retain a characteristic traditional architecture, often polarized on a common threshing floor surrounded by sets of granaries.

The rational use of the available resources is evidenced by the traditional paths, which often serve as the routes through which the water passes before reaching the fields. A traditional way of fertilizing the land, washing the sidewalks of the excrement that the cattle leaves when passing in the paths of the villages. In this way, traditional farmers have transformed an urban environment, barely appealing, into a habitat of high ecological interest. The diversity of plants found in these agricultural paths in the rural interior is a remarkable testimony that Man and Biodiversity are not incompatible. The sucker, the nettle and the pennyroyal are just some of the plants that punctuate these paths.

In these villages it is common to find the chimney swallow, whose presence is well tolerated by the populations, since this bird feeds on undesirable insects, very common in areas with cattle. In the surroundings of the villages there is a belt of vegetable gardens, marshes and agricultural fields, which tends to decrease due to the desertification of the rural interior. In the lameiros, true repositories of plant diversity, you can find showy grasses such as hay-scent, grass-lanar or nut-grass.

Source: https://www.visitbaiao.pt/