Attractions and Places To See around Monte Do Trigo - Top 20

Charcoal factory. Here, holm oak, cork oak, or olive wood is transformed into precious charcoal for grilling. 👍🇵🇹

Walking among the cork oaks, enjoying their shade.👍

Charcoal, a versatile and essential fuel source, is created through a fascinating process that involves converting wood into a concentrated carbon-rich material. Over the years, both traditional and modern methods have been employed to produce charcoal from wood, each with its own set of advantages. Near S. Bartolomeu do Outeiro we can view charcoal makers in laboration...

The montado is a unique ecosystem, created by man, characteristic of the Alentejo. It consists of forests of holm oaks, cork oaks, oaks and chestnut trees, with a very delicate balance and which only exist in the Mediterranean, Algeria, Morocco and especially in the south of the Iberian Peninsula. In Portugal, the country with the largest extension of cork oaks in the world (33% of the world's area), the montado is legally protected, with its felling prohibited and exploitation encouraged. Portugal is the world's leading exporter of cork through the manufacture of stoppers.

The Montado is an agrosilvopastoral system explored at several levels – trees, bushes and herbs – according to the potential of each region. On the tree level it can be made up of oaks like cork oak (Quercus suber), holm oak (Q. rotundifolia) and less frequently pyrene oak (Q. pyrenaica) and portuguese oak (Q. faginea), in pure or mixed populations with variable densities. The ground cover is occupied by pastures used by cattle or is used for dry land crops on a rotation system. The natural pastures can be occupied by shrubs, in variable proportions. Humans are an integral and fundamental part of this ecosystem. It was through our clearing action that the montados were created, ever since we started intervening on our natural surroundings. Human management is necessary, in a more or less intensive way, in order to maintain the montado. Without this intervention, the system evolves, naturally to form a dense forest, where people have more difficulty obtaining resources. The way this process of transformation of the Mediterranean forest developed influenced the structure of the system as it presents today. Some older practices still persist, now without context, making more difficult the adaptation of the system to the new ways of agrarian production. Other ways emerged, some well adapted to the system, other causing more or less serious disturbances. The montado is a system for using the soil developed on a physical background that involves climate, pedological and geomorphological factors with specific characteristics. It is why this ecosystem is restricted to such a limited area, when compared to other ecosystems in our planet.

Charcoal ovens existed throughout most of the Alentejo, although we can assume that they were more common near areas where there were more holm oak and cork oak forests. Theoretically, the wood used to create charcoal comes from the cleaning of trees, an activity that normally takes place between January and March. After the cutting, the "traça" (wood cutting) is done, which is the cleaning of the trunks. This results in a quantity of wood that is taken close to the place where the oven will be. In some localities, this act of transporting the wood close to the oven is called "rechega" (a kind of "rechega"). The oven is normally built in a previously selected location, on flat land with "good, non-floury" soil. Text taken from the book: Tradição por Terras Dentro (Tradition in the Lands Within).

Ruins of the Ganhoteira Thermal Baths. Between the towns of Aguiar, in the municipality of Viana do Alentejo, and São Bartolomeu do Outeiro, in the municipality of Portel, are the ruins of the Ganhoteira Thermal Baths, which used to belong to the municipality of Évora. Construction records date back to 1853. They have been abandoned for about sixty years and currently belong to the Eugénio de Almeida Foundation, which has fenced off the area, but allows access on the rural roads that serve the area. In the past, local residents would come to bathe in these thermal baths, as the water is very ferruginous and hyposaline, forming a red cream on the surface. It was used to treat skin and psychiatric diseases. The Associação dos Amigos de Alcáçovas, through the Grupo Pedestrianista Alcáçovas Outdoor, regularly organizes hikes in this area of the Serra de Portel.

At Mediterranean latitudes, (30º-40º) the effect of the moist winds coming from the west (the sea), during the winter, soothing the continental cold, alternates with the dry and hot winds of summer, associated with subtropical high pressures. During winter, the Mediterranean basin is also subject to winds coming from the North Atlantic. These cold and moist masses of air warm up when in contact with the Mediterranean Sea, forming low pressures. These, then, result in short periods of intense rainfall, causing easy erosion of the soil. During summer the Azores High moves north, while hot and dry winds move up from the Sahara seaside (Sirocco wind). As for the geomorphological aspects, the montados occupy preferably flat lands or softly rolling hills. They can occupy more steep areas, but in that situation the risk of erosion of the soil is high, being recommended it stays covered with bushes, in a more natural structure. Several abiotic factors act differently to create a large diversity of variants in the system. The inclines and running of nutrients to lower areas, the various levels of sun exposure, the various types and depths of soils, as well as the various densities of arboreal cover, combine with different interventions of humans over time, level of pressure of grazing, cycles of rupture and pressure of usage, to create an extreme diversity in the patterns of the montado. From this diversity results a mosaic of structurally and ecologically interdependent systems.