Serra de São Mamede: Quinta do Barrieiro - Apartadura Dam - Pico de São Mamede Loop

A fairly strenuous walk that encompasses the lake and dam of Apartadura, and then goes up to the highest peak of the natural park: Pico the São Mamede. The difficulty rating is mostly due to a few locations where the terrain is either steep going downhill or growth of plants has made the route a bit tight.

The route starts off in the nice little hotel of Quinta do Barrieiro, which I can recommend to stay in if you are walking or just visiting the area. But if you are not around that hotel, it is easy to start at the Barragem (dam) on the north edge of the route, which has public parking.

After climbing out of the grounds of the hotel, past the various art installations, we turn downhill towards some pastures and then woodland. This eventually takes us to the manmade lake and later to the dam.

After this we start going uphill to the southeast. There has been some fires around here so where previously this route was most likely covered by trees, it is now exposed. Eventually we reach some trees though, as our journey now takes us ever further up. There are some locations where it is hard to understand if the park rangers want everyone to keep out, or just vehicular traffic. You'll note one place where I backtracked a little bit to make sure I was not "trespassing". As is often the case in Portugal, there are no explanations for any barriers or keep out signs. I can imagine they want to make sure some fire scorched areas grow back correctly, but it is hard to know sometimes.

Once we're passed some fire affected areas, we pass a road and can now clearly see the various antennas and equipment on top of the peak we are aiming for. I final push up takes us essentially directly besides these structures and there is a great view to be had.

The descent from the summit is the area where this walk gets its "difficult" rating, as a lot of pathways are not maintained. Especially one intersection in the walk (at 918m elevation) takes you though a path that seems to have been deliberately grown over with Eucalyptus and other bushes. Here you need to be ready to push your way though some foliage or find an alternate path.

After the descent it is a fairly gentle path back to the entry to the hotel.

Would recommend high top boots fo this one (I tend to prefer low tops) and definitely sun protection (hat, etc), even though it looks on the satellite images that most will be covered, there are large potions that now are not, to these images are from before fires and other clearances.