Pedrógão pequeno

We had hired a car and were determined to discover the real Portugal.

Whatever that may be. My birthday fell on Halloween and we had decided that as it was my sixtieth  we would get away from the busy and frenetic city life of Lisbon and go far into the country and see what was there. We had a week.

We had booked a small studio apartment for four nights, really just a converted outbuilding near a tiny village called Pedrógão Pequeno.The village is about a 100 kilometres north of Lisbon in an area known as the Bieras. The car we hired was very small a Peugeot 208.

 But even so as we approached the address the road became so small we had real trouble negotiating some of the bends and constrictions. We were greeted by our hosts and after the daughter of the family was found for English instructions we eventually found a place to park.They lived in an adjacent property which itself is deep in the rural forest. The area is well off the normal tourist path.

The owners smallholding had been very close to the wildfires a few weeks before and there were scorched trees only a few yards from the front gate. Even so as the sun set the peace and tranquillity was overwhelming.

We were introduced to the two resident dogs and were made to feel very welcome, the small apartment had everything we needed. We decided to pop into the local village for supplies and a quick look around. This was our first view of Pedrógão Pequeno.

It really was very pretty, as the sun set, it being the night before Halloween there were local witches about.

The whole idea was to use this small village as a base to explore from, however we had fallen into our usual trap of finding our immediate surroundings to be too interesting to pass by. This seemed to be a great opportunity to see some of rural Portugal.

That evening we drove over the dam to the slightly larger village of Pedrógão Grande in search of a meal. We discovered a small bar cafe which seemed to be popular with locals, especially soldiers and sat and enquired as to a menu. We were given the options for the menu do dia, It turned out to be Frango (chicken) either with pasta or chips and rice.

We ordered and were made to feel very welcome ur neighbour offered us some local cheese and we were entertained by a small dog which insisted on coming in to the bar and was being surreptitiously fed by almost everyone including the owners!

 A three course meal with a carafe of wine, bread cheese and coffee cost us the grand total of 13 euros. We began to realise we were a long way from Lisbon!
We drove back up into the forest and the following day broke as sunny as the last.

The property was called A casa de Moinho ( house of the windmill ) although why the windmill seems to be called Ebenezer is anyone's guess!

We drove back into the village to see it in daylight. Its about a 3 kilometre drive.

I'm guessing that every conurbation in Spain and Portugal has a bandstand, as well as several churches, chapels and holy wells etc. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that a coffee in the Mercado cafe could be had for 50 cents and the small supermercado was equally cheap and cheerful....

The village itself is utterly charming. The post below has a whole history of its own being destroyed by a jealous rival village and accidentally damaged by travelling players in the past.

The whitewashed buildings are interspersed with buildings in obvious need of renovation and it quickly became apparent why our host from the windmill ( Jose ) had asked if we were in the area in search of property, you can pick up a wreck of a building for 6000 euros.

something to think about! As we had decide to stay in the local area we looked into some local walks and decided to take advantage of a notice board describing two. PR1 it was then!