It is one of the doors to explore the São Mamede Natural Park where the highest peak of Alentejo is lifted. Full of grace and poetry, Alegrete is proud of the alpean castle and a waterfall described like a pearl to discover.
“Castelinho perceived that leaves memory, open all day with easy access for walking, where he runs the fresh breeze of Serra de São Mamede and enables good photos about the valley”thus describes a visitor the experience lived in the Castle of Alegrete, dated from the fourteenth century.
We are in Alegrete, in Alto Alentejo, a village of the municipality of Portalegre and gateway to the Serra de São Mamede Natural Park. Here, the earth and the sky of the Alentejo are found in that which is the highest peak in the region, with the geodetic milestone to mark 1,025 meters altitude.
From the peak of St. Mamede, the Alentejo extends almost endless, easily reaching the real Spanish lands, with the guarantee that eyes trained on clean days reach the Serra da Estrela silhouette. Closer, Marvão’s almost magical clipping and the blue dam of the apartment.
Full of grace and poetry
Village conquered to Moors by D. Afonso Henriques, Alegrete arouses the passion translated into his own anthem that music teacher António Fernandes Delicate, son of the earth, does not hesitate to chant “Alegrete is beautiful land;
Despite having “healed for a few years on the outside,” António Fernandes always had “the heart in Alegrete”. It justifies with “the clean white house, the castle at the top of the hill that provides the stunning view of a paradise landscape, the generosity of the people, in love with the land and the philharmonic and who excel for the good to receive, the gastronomy, the sweets and the good wine and more”.
Alegrete is fitted in the Serra de São Mamede Natural Park, whose existence dates back to the paleolithic, according to rock paintings discovered in the Chapel of Lady of Lapa. It was, over the centuries, one of the main sentries of the Alentejo defense line.
On this trip Alegrete cannot lose a visit to the castle, as well as to the Clock Tower, the Mother Church, the Church of Mercy, the former City Hall building and the bandstand. Lunch in the snack-bar the lagar (Tel. 245965228). Between July 18 and 20, in Largo do Espírito Santo, another edition of .
Follow the Pr3 – PTG – Pedestrian route of Alegrete, which is part of the village and continues through the Serra de São Mamede Natural Park, created in 1989. Over the course of 11 km will find dams, led, steval, cherry trees and friends.
Cascade do Pego do Hell
Alto Alentejo presents a very peculiar landscape context, in particular the Serra de São Mamede Natural Park. Described by many as “a pearl to discover”, the cascade of Pego do Hell is located at the limit of the parish of Alegrete.
“It’s easily accessible because it’s very close to the road and it’s a pleasant place to take a shower,” says Miguel Cardoso, brother of the Ribeira Dam’s Bar (Tel. 245580116), just over 1 km from the waterfall.
To get there, drive at N246 and, close to Arronches, go to monasteries. This road heads to M517. “After the pandemic, the Portalegre City Council had a walkway built to improve access to the cascade of Pego do Hell,” he reveals.
The new walkways connects the Old Road on the bank of Arronches, where is the water fall, which “forms a circle surrounded by rocks, where we jumped into the water. There are rocks four and five meters high”, continues Miguel Cardoso, who, in childhood, dived into the crystal clear waters of this place.
Bonelli Eagle, Majestic Symbol
It should be noted that in the Serra de São Mamede Natural Park, 800 plant species share land with amphibians and reptiles. This is the country with the largest number of species of amphibians and reptiles, including water lizard, the pardon-to-Iberian frog, the thirteenth-orange, but especially the tortoons, threatened by the capture for commercial purposes, such as the striated and the Mediterranean carapace.
Already in the birds, the eagles of Bonelli (symbol of the park), black vultures and royal buffers flee this piece of sky of the Alentejo. The protected area with about 56 thousand hectares integrates part of the municipalities of Arronches, Castelo de Vide, Marvão and Portalegre. It is sometimes possible to see a boar or deer, now returned to the mountain after an effort to reconstitute their habitats. The rich vegetation is marked by oaks, chestnut trees, cork oaks and rolls.
Smuggling
They are mysterious routes, these from smuggling in a raiano context. The exact rails are unknown so the municipality of Portalegre has not yet “created” a path alluding to the theme. However, according to reports from the older people of Alegrete and São Julião, parishes that border La Codera and La Rabaza in Spain, for a long time, clandestine travel, were almost daily practice.
Between 1930 and 1980, the village of Alegrete gathered the ideal conditions for the development of this activity: situated by the Spain border; Surrounded by mountain with thick bush, cloths and abundance, offered “the ideal scenery for the game of the cat and the mouse between smugglers and authorities”.
For the neighboring country, eggs, chickens, and, with greater preponderance, coffee, scarce and widely appreciated by the Spaniards, was so important that “in 1943 a coffee roasting in Alegrete,” they brought fabrics, shoes, meat, rubbers, tails and animals. of goats and sheep ”.
In Alegrete, the main route of the smuggling passed through the immediately of the Chapel of Our Lady of Lapa. Some smugglers, when persecuted, used the space to hide the loads and, driven by despair and faith, prayed to the saint: “Lady of the lap, my lady, keep me and my cargo.”
This route provides a unique environment in which nature in the purest form joins the animation of the stories that are told, goes through the Alentejo and reaches the extreme, through silent tracks and smugglers, marking a time and unforgettable memories that illustrate the way of life and the cultural identity of the people of the Raia.
