Every year, we organise an excursion to the Serra de Estrela National Park. This is a dream for hard rock geologists, geomorphologists and hydrologists, and a very good learning opportunity for the non-geologists in our field course. However, by this time most students are tired and need a day at the beach to relax, or simply need to collect some more water samples in their catchment so that they can watch the soccer games the next day.
So we took our loaded van, including our borehole drilling equipment and outboard engine, and at 9:00 am, with four students, went on a 1.5 hour drive to reach the park. First stopped at a dam, where the girls decided to swim very briefly in the reservoir water, which was very cold at 14.5 degrees Celsius. Then continued through the granites to the village of Manteigas, where we enjoyed a big lunch.
That's when the real stuff starts. We went up the glacial valley to enjoy the views and stopped at a source (Fonte Martins) to fill our water bottles with exceptionally clean mountain water.
The valley is of exceptional beauty. Made by a glacier moving through the granites during the past ice ages, it is a very straight, classical U-shaped, glacier valley, with morenes, circes and al the other phenomena associated with this geological phenomenom of erosion.
It is also nice to see the granite and its eroded forms in detail so we parked the car and climbed on of the glacier valley slopes, to reach some strangely weathered granite outcrops.
Bought some Serra de Estrala ham at Torre (highest point at about 2000 m above sea level), had coffee, got copious dinner, went to the University of Aveiro garage to get some geophysical equipment and brought the students home. Vincent and me back in our hotel at 23:30 h after a very satisfying day of work/leisure.
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