Paradinha & Nagosa: schist, spa and chanfana smoke

The road that smells of damp schist

Beyond the last bend at Carrascal the Távora valley road narrows to a single track. Even in August the dark schist walls exude the scent of wet earth. Crest one or two more ridges and the view unbuttons: first the square Romanesque tower of Paradinha, then the low, sinuous roofline of Nagosa, the two villages stitched together by a white parish boundary on the map.

The squire’s lane and the valley of walnuts

The so-called “Estrada da Fidalga” begins where José-do-Café keeps his chickens in a roofless 1960s SEAT 600. Before 1892 the only way up from Moimenta-da-Beira was a mule-track known as the Moor’s Path; the same granite setts now echo on Sunday mornings when families walk to mass. At Casa dos Morais Sarmento the coat-of-arms – an eagle losing paint flake by flake – has been joined by a tabby cat asleep above the lintel since Dona Amélia “modernised” the façade with a coat of electric-blue.

In Nagosa the sulphur spring still reeks of bad eggs by the school bend. The crumbling spa, its stucco dropping off in plates, bears the hand-painted legend “Estabelecimento de Curas”. Dr Sousa from Viseu once dispatched patients here for what locals call “the poor man’s psoriasis cure”. Now only Zé-Mergulhão visits, watering the loquat he has planted inside the abandoned bath-house.

Midsummer smoke and goat stew

On the night of the 23rd the air turns sharp with burnt rosemary – António the baker scouring his wood oven for tomorrow’s chanfana. The goat, three years old, has been marinating since Tuesday in wine from Sr Ramalho’s cellar. By nine on St John’s morning the smoke is visible from Vilar. Women ferry branches of broom in the parish dustcart; the school bus is the only scheduled link between the two villages since Zé-do-Pipo broke his leg in the pinewood.

When the bonfire sinks and the logs collapse into embers the black iron pot is lifted. The meat slackens at the sight of a spoon. It is served in clay bowls with maize bread that cracks audibly, drenched in a sauce darker than table wine. Those who refuse goat get turnip soup shot through with the bacon Granny Rosa smoked over resinous pine all winter.

Terraces, foxes and kites

The footpath between the villages begins beside the Painter’s Mill, its broken oak axle still wedged in the stones. Four point eight kilometres of packed earth – measured by the parish clerk’s grandson on GPS – smell of rockrose once the sun warms them. At 620 m, where the trail slips between two schist walls, an abandoned olive grove belongs to the fox. At six o’clock, when the sun drops behind Nagosa’s boundary stone, kites wheel upwards as the first kitchen lights flick on below.

Down in Baldios, Dona Odete still slings her bacelo of olive pomace into the eucalyptus to dry – the only spot, she claims, where the Távora wind will not carry the oily reek into neighbouring cottages. Close the granary door and you can still catch last autumn’s scent mingling with the mouldering walnuts nobody gathered.

229 inhabitants, 94 of them over sixty-five. Yet on the night the January carol singers merge with Zé-da-Horta’s concertina, the valley feels twice as populous. Voices slide downhill, mingle with the night-watchman’s dog, and under a full moon the entire Távora seems to sing.