No surprise that it was going to be another hot day! Plus, Portugal is just about closing down for summer as many companies including the one that will (hopefully) start on our new house soon are off for their summer holidays. So in keeping with our ever increasing knowledge of our local region, we were off exploring again.
This time it was a quick trip. Only about 20 minutes drive on the way to Fatima is a village which has a small sensory park. Not being sure what that means here, and because it showed up on google maps with some nice images, we set off to check it out.
We were pretty sure we had been to the village before. On one of our previous visits, the builder who had been working on our friends house showed us around some of the houses he had been building here. It’s clear that there is only a few houses that are really old and most have been built recently. We never got to explore the park though and that was our main objective.
It is not far from Fatima, which we have walked around on a couple of occasions, but not really blogged about before. It’s a main religious center and the destination for major pilgrimages. Once our house is completed we will do ‘the promise’ too and walk to Fatima. Luckily for us it’s only 15km away!
Here’s a few pictures from there:
So, to get back on track, we had a lovely quiet drive to Pia do Urso using the Sat Nav, but I think it took us on the route set on the ‘shortest’ setting! I think there is a quicker way which I will try at some stage!
The village is clearly aimed at tourism, as there is a large car park at the end of the village, and it was quite full already. We managed to park without any problems, but seeing we hadn’t experienced any engine warning lights for some time, did not put the sun visor/protector up. Schoolboy error, more of that later.
Before we set off around the park, we decided to grab a bit of breakfast and there is two cafes and a restaurant to choose from. Weirdly, there didn’t seem to be many people considering the amount of cars? We chose a nice outside table in the shade and had our obligatory coffee and toasty and as the weather was so nice, another coffee and some pastais de nata too, and very nice they were!
It was then off to explore the village and park. There are lots of signposts and information boards dotted in and around the park, so the route is easy to follow and marked out by a wooden pavement so you can’t go wrong. There is also lots of seating along the walk so it’s a great place for a picnic in quiet and peaceful surroundings. There are various ‘stations’ around the park with either apparatus to use or look at. But not sure I would class it as ‘sensory’ as in the same term used as in a ‘sensory garden’ would be in the UK. It’s not like there were unusual smelling plants or things you could experience with different textures etc, but more for ‘various things to see’. There was a ‘sound’ station however, and one where you had to turn wooden tiles to reveal animal designs, Netty left with a weird rabbit-chicken which she never really worked out, which was quite funny!
It’s not a very long walk, but more of a short windy route through a geologically interesting area with rock formations and sink holes surrounded by a beautiful indigenous deciduous forest full of wildlife and lovely and quiet and peaceful, sensory in those terms. Many of the sink holes were full of frogs, I don’t think I have seen so many in one place before! Also, I am still wondering where all the people were, as there was hardly anyone walking along the route while we were exploring?
Anyway, as always, the sun makes it great to be out exploring and after a very short walk around the village and a quick stop for an ice cream to cool down, we made our way back to the car. There was just one more place I wanted to check out on the way back. It was using a different route back and overlooking the village of Alqueidão de Serra where the Roman road was that we had previously walked to.
On google maps it is called ‘ miradouro jurássico ’ and is just a viewpoint built as a stone circle from the surrounding Jurassic rocks, and seems to be a Mecca for mountain bikers!
The issue was it’s quite uphill as you can imagine and the first bit of uphill we got to the car went into its ‘shut-down’ mode with all the system faults flashing and shutting down! With all these pinging we missed the car park but parked up in a lay by to see if the car would reset. But when we turned around to go back up to the car park it complained again. So before we set off walking up past the wind turbines to find the viewpoint we made sure we put the sun visor/protector sheet in the front windscreen to let it cool a bit.
Well, we eventually got there as you can see in the video below and the views were worth it. Also once we got back to the car with the sun kept off the console, we never had any faults for the rest of the journey home! The car is going in to diagnose what the problem is next week, so watch this space!
Our Portuguese Life 