Late afternoon at Praia do Campismo, Tróia Pensinsular. Soft white sand, pine trees, warm ocean and magnificent views to the Serra da Arrábida
My secret hideaway: Piódão
If anywhere on the Portuguese mainland you'd feel as if you were literally walking on clouds, it's here. The green steepness of the scenery makes it feel like a small continent. The parched landscape is deeply-incised, deeply-pitted; concealing, then revealing hidden waterfalls, tiny houses attached to allotments, and scorched terraces of vines, and the orchards, loud with drunk bees.
1 October 2015
The schist stone, used as a building material, has a beauty all of its own. The stone is dark grey, metally, coppery, mustardy and even flecked with auburn.
I first cycled here, last year. It took one hour to get there, it was a strenuous ride, three kilometres uphill with no relent, and then another eight kilometres down-hill. For me, the pronunciation of the place name was a bit of a conundrum. Piódão. The acute accent over the ‘o‘ and the problematic tilde over the ‘a‘ were as hard as the landscape.
Locals trip it off their tongues with perfect ease. The closest approximation is pee-oh-downg. Speak heavily through your nose at the last syllable. The hamlet itself is even more curious than its pronunciation.
The summits are statuesque. The goat-paths, the narrow trails, the tarmac roads all seem constricted, squashed in, like the complicated lines of paper origami. From the uplands, it’s a fifteen-minute descent to the village.
Pedaling on my mountain bike up the roads from Côja, I’m soon in a very high place; the straggle of villages fades away, and I’m in a bleak, stony, windswept upland with unbroken views as far as the eye can see. The mega-watt sun, even in early October, is unforgiving. I stop every ten minutes to drink water from my flask. The single reminder of modernity are the occasional – but largely unobtrusive – wind turbines on the hills to the right.
The goat-paths, the narrow trails, the tarmac roads all seem constricted, squashed in, like the complicated lines of paper origami. From the uplands, it’s a fifteen-minute descent to the village.
But for anyone with an ounce of poetry in their soul, an hour or so before dusk on an October evening is the perfect time to appreciate the steeply-terraced hamlet of Piódão. It is an enchanting place, befitting of its remote location. I am told by my Portuguese friend that up until 1972 you could only reach Piódão on horseback. The only road then ended about 12km away and not even oxcarts could pass. Installation of electricity occurred in 1978.
Piódão maintains the medieval layout of streets, winding and narrow, adapting to the uneven ground. The hue of the village’s schist stone is as dark-grey as a cracked gravestone.
Houses are jammed in tight with each other. Bright sea-blue paint has been daubed on door-frames, windows and doors. Reportedly, this single choice of colour is a consequence of the isolation of Piódão, and also that one man in the village sold only one paint colour. Today, the sea-blue paint gives vitality to the village, against the lovely, atmospheric, sombre-grey stone. The smell of wood-smoke and bonfires drifts across the valley. In modern times, it remains a village of shepherds, farmers, miners, beekeepers, horse breeders and traders. The meadows around Piódão are lush, hung with heavy, deep-purple grapes. Sunken lanes lead from the cobblestone streets and through the forest, vertically, to the stark slopes. Upon arrival, in the centre of Piódão, you’ll not miss the church of Our Lady of the Conception. The church dates back to the 17th century, and is unusually white with its pale-blue trim, looking like a wedding cake candy decoration.
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