between the range and the water that comes down from the snow
Big, smooth stones, worn by the river. That's the first image of Verdelhos: a riverbed with character, where the meltwater of the Serra da Estrela meets the valley. The beach leans against the village of Verdelhos, a few kilometres from Covilhã, in an area where the landscape already has the hardness and the cleanness of the mountains.
The river Zêzere passes here still young, near its sources, behaving differently from how it does further down. The flow varies a lot with the season, and the Verdelhos river beach makes use of a stretch with natural pools and calmer zones between the granite rocks. The surroundings are high-altitude vegetation, none of the typical poplar corridor.
The village right beside it is small and has the scale of mountain settlements. No marina, no water park, no ice cream stand. You come here for the closeness to the Estrela, for the air coming down off the mountain, for a river that hasn't yet been tamed by dams on this stretch. Whoever lives in Covilhã knows what this is; whoever comes from outside is still discovering that the Serra isn't only snow in January.
what you'll find
- granite everywhere, in and out of the water
- the Zêzere with little volume outside the thaw, but with a lot of form
- the village of Verdelhos right after, with a mountain human scale
- altitude air even in high summer
- scarce shade, the rock holds the afternoon heat
