It is next to the church that the rail gets its start, but the eyes flee to the heights, to the summit of the mountain where the chapel of Senhora do Viso challenges the legs and the breath, silent invitation but clear to the spirit walker. This is not any miracle but the will of the walker in scrolling the kilometers that takes the audacious to put his legs on the way, eyes on the challenging heights, anticipating the magnificent views that easily is expected.
Thus, between the houses in the beginning and through the nature after, the graceful cluster of houses is left behind, marked in the whiteness of the facades and in the pointed arm of the church tower looking at the sky.
Even before we reached the top, the landscape appears to be magnificent, with settlements rising on the hill alongside and the Marão waving above, imposing the grandeur of its granite whose age is lost in memory. But it's up there that the breathing is suspended when the Marão is looking directly to us. The bulged of its slopes, the multiple fringe carved by water, wind and snow, in a magnificent hairstyle green and grey that in winter gives way to bright white, which descending from the summit faints at the foot. From here the trail begins to descend, but the surprises are not over yet. At a lower level, but still too high, the chapel of St. Peter offers a hemispheric vision. The mountains are lost in wavy successive lines, hesitating between blue and grey, where the linearity of the vineyards is combined with the dotted houses and olive groves, in impossible rhythms, in drawings of extreme care, in chromatic variation according to the season of the year. Thus, the spring green will faint in ochres and oxides in land-of-Sienna and dry greens, in warm sepia, in brown and seductive blacks, who bewitch the eyes of photographers and all sensitive souls to the beauty conjugate of the spontaneous with the planned.
The end of the rail is made almost all in nature, among the trees that runs alongside the dirt path, protecting the leaves of hazelnut and chestnut trees, the pines and oaks, elders of sweet berries and aromatic floral bouquet. More close to the ground abounds the myosotis, the bells and many other beauties of the natural flora. At the lowest point next to the road, fertile gardens seem to have fallen from the heights, sliding down the steep slopes where the vineyards defy the gravity. The deep feeling prevailing for those who finish this route is gratitude for a place like this.
Location: Santa Marta de Penaguião
