Lamas de Mouro - Peneda is the third stage of the Peneda Gêres Great Route (GR50). It's about 8 kilometres of pure sensory dazzle and complete psychic soothing. Superb therapy for those with intellectually demanding and permanently connected working lives. It's a place to let off steam and disconnect from everything.

The route starts near the Porta de Lamas de Mouro interpretive area and immediately continues through a leafy mixed forest, so that before you've warmed up your legs you've already completely dissolved into nature. Afterwards,  we continue one foot after the other along old paths and tracks, precious fragments that allow us to reconstitute the history of these parts.

If you're not travelling alone, it's best to keep conversations to a minimum and let the silence, impregnated with the music of the birds and the water of the streams, envelop you, absorb you and dilute you. In the meantime, you can inhale the fresh, fragrant air deeply and gaze at the fascinating granite massifs cut out in the clarity of the sky.

And so we continue, immersed in the impeccable beauty of the glacial valley, the steep slopes, the oak groves and the mixed forests. We cross paths with the cows that graze there and raise their heads in curiosity, with the River Mouro that rises nearby and ends in the Minho, the border river, and with the Peneda, translucent and unhurried. 

And with one or other hiker. While time drips by unnoticed until we reach the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Peneda and stay there chatting and observing the details of the stunning mountain landscape.