Talking Location With … author Simon Carr, Beira Beixa, Portugal

24th June 2019

#TalkingLocationWith… Simon Carr, author of The Exhausting Summer of São Martino, set in Beira Beixa, Portugal. Over to Simon:

The Beira Beixa is the setting for my new book The Exhausting Summer of São Martino and is available on Audible now. In the overwhelming heat of an endless Portuguese summer, we meet Prospero, the Mayor of the smallest city in Europe, a man determined to help English incomers to the Beira Baixa. But the English are very difficult to help, and his good intentions provoke social outrage, romantic chaos and something that may or may not be a murder. Also, donkeys.

A short trip through the last undiscovered part of western Europe

Here in the Beira Baixa, we have perhaps the least-known and possibly the oldest-inhabited part of Portugal.

The region is defined by two natural boundaries: a mountain range to the west and the mighty Tagus river to the south. To get here, you drive up from Lisbon on a fine, EU-funded motorway bearing very little in the way of traffic. You leave the regional capital Castelo Branco on your right, turn off the motorway at Alcains and go back about 500 years.

Here, almost on the Spanish border, we are as far away from the coast as this sea-faring country allows. There is no golf, no fish and chips shops, no Irish bars. There are great rolling fields of cork oaks, though. And a system of schist-built villages dating back to the very old days – and with some of the original families living in the very houses their ancestors built.

Everywhere you look you will see glimpses of old Portugal. In the villages of Medelim and Bemposta you will see the tall pole levers to draw and distribute water – the same simple machines that were seen by Moses three thousand years ago. In defiance of modern practices, the cattle in the fields don’t have their sharp horns cut. There are donkey carts to be seen on the back roads. The family kitchen gardens – the hortas – still produce great quantities of vegetables, fruit, olives. Little old ladies walk home down the road with perfect posture balancing a bundle of faggots on their heads. Men drive their motocultivadores with their wife sitting on a stool in the trailer. And everywhere, the ancient Lusitanian genes can be clearly seen in the oldest generations.

Eagles and Gryphon vultures ride the thermals above the Gates of Rodão. Storks flap into their chaotic nests atop poles or pylons. Wild boar hide in the abandoned lands amid the broom and Lacrimae Christi – sometimes they burst across the road at night – one took out the front offside of a car I was driving home and was bunted 25 yards up the road where it lay on its back shuddering in its death throes. Within a minute it had recovered and took off into the darkness.

In the fields you very often see a ruined dwelling – seven metres by five – with the roof fallen in, brambles engulfing it. There’s almost always a well. And olive trees. The potential is tantalising. The walls are sound and the renovation can be complete in a couple of months. What with the price of property (it’s still a buyer’s market) there has been an influx of foreigners – homesteaders, back-to-nature enthusiasts, artists, writers. It’s a region on the brink of discovery – like the Dordogne in the 1960s, or Tuscany in the 1970s. In a sense, the wild west of Europe.

Monsanto is the main tourist destination – with the ruins of a hilltop Templar castle and houses built into the granite, sometimes with a leaning boulder forming the roof. Very steep streets keep the population fit.

It is said that a famous siege was concluded by Monsanto – starving and on the point of death – throwing a cow over the precipice at the besiegers (who were also starving). The gesture said, ‘You look hungry. We have plenty. Have something to eat, if you like.’ The army abandoned the siege and went home.

Monsanto’s Geohotel is pretty modern and nicely designed (it isn’t cheap).

Petiscos E Granitos is the favoured restaurant of the area with its inside/outside tables and one of the finest views in Europe. If it is shut, the Taverna Lusitana a little further on up the hill also has the same astonishing view.

Then you might walk through the south gate down what might be a Roman cart track cobbled with stones smoothed by many centuries of wear. Under the shading cork oaks there will very likely be the smallest owner of the smallest herd of goats in the region. It takes you to the magical church of São Pedro in a clearing of the corks, guarded by vast boulders. No one knows about it. There are abandoned properties around it which makes you yearn to give everything up and come and live here.

But don’t stop in Monsanto – Medelim deserves a visit. The Jewish street with its long, curved street of houses is an historic site. You will see a Christian cross outside one, carved to tell the Inquisition that they were conversos (Christian converts). The houses in the terrace are linked by a secret passage that connected them all, so that they could conduct their rites without being seen to congregate. The Presidente of Medelim, Senhor Albano, runs a Jewish Festival here every year, attracting a significant attendance. Lunch at the Prato Cheio restaurant – on your way to Idanha a Velha (birthplace of King Wamba) with its excellent tourist centre and Bishop’s Palace.

Also:

• The Restaurant by the Fountain in Aldeia João de Pirez has a little terrace behind the Priory gardens and tables under the orange trees.
• The Festival of Flowers in Santa Margarida happens the last week in May – when the skies are blue and the thermometer in the comfortable mid-20s.
• The O Jardim in Penamacor with its attached café is blessed retreat from the summer heat under the darkest shade in the district – huge, old Tilia trees.
• The barragem at Idanha a Nova is the site of the Boom festival, attracting a hundred thousand New Age ravers every other year. In their absence the lake is a natural marvel.
• Geologists will enjoy the rift at Penha Garcia with its exposed formations. Also, the vast and precariously situated boulders on mountainsides are worth seeing.
• There are thermal springs (Termos) at Aguas and Monfortinho.

Thank you so much to Simon for such wonderful insights into this well hidden part of Portugal. And listeners, you are in for a treat when you listen to The Exhausting Summer of São Martino

You can read our review HERE!

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