This place was sculpted by ice,” said my hiking guide Rodrigo Marques, as he gestured towards granite ridges that receded into the distance like a dark, choppy Atlantic ocean. “These deep U-shaped valleys, the plateaus among the peaks – they are all from the movement of glaciers during the last Ice Age.”
Comparisons to distant landscapes – Dartmoor’s tors, the Scottish Highlands, the Alpine foothills – came to mind as I scanned the rugged mountain scenery around us. Yet only a couple of hours earlier, a sweatier version of me had hopped into a hire car in Porto. Countless hairpin turns later, we were deep into the country’s interior at Serra da Estrela Nature Park. With some points at 1,250 metres above sea level, it was 10 degrees cooler than in the city, and unlike any Portuguese landscape I’ve laid eyes on before.
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From our vantage point on a windswept outcrop, the remnants of glacial lakes were glassy shards against a scrubland dotted with pine trees, thistles, juniper and gorse. As for the boulders heaped around us, they seem to have been hurled by more turbulent forces than millennia-long weathering – mountain giants, perhaps.
Serra da Estrela is the country’s tallest mountain range and home to its only ski resort. I visited in midsummer, however, so the high-altitude pastures were tinted purple with heather and flickering with yellow gatekeeper butterflies.
Marques was leading the daily guided walk for guests of Casa das Penhas Douradas. He pointed out a booted eagle wheeling in the brooding sky, and the churned-up earth where a wild boar had been foraging.
We’d taken the Fraga das Penhas e Albufeira de Vale do Rossim route, where fauna such as these were a highlight. So too were the native Bordaleira sheep, who graze across the plateaus during summertime. Shepherds lead them from lower-lying village pastures – festooned with colourful pom-poms and clattering bells – in a centuries-old ritual…
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