It’s a very primal place. It is thus: liminal and you are hard pushed to know if those huge boulders with smaller piles of stones on top are in fact ‘as is’ since the last active volcano, or great glacial retreat.

Intellectually you may know that you just stepped off the track some place betwixt Quinta de Abelhas and Dolmen de Cortiço. Yet that was whilst you still had a grip, on time and there you may have seen the odd plastic bottle in the woods, but not far in. Now you are far in (only minutes in, you guess). Javeli tracks (wild boar) abound here. Stones, like stones of the dolmen, only smaller jut out, or lie prone. An ancient quarry, or extension of sacred space around the dolmen, but at some time thrown over? You sit a while, entranced, the lichen patterns at once draw you in, to some inner space, but equally you are shot across the surface, every cosmos is reachable.

You circle, test the narrower tracks hemned in by briar, wild rose and giesta. Some paths are not perhaps meant to be followed too far in …
All at once a wall and behold a three metre drop to a slightly clearer grassy area, but stiil bounded by thicket. Terraces then, the hand of man ( and a very fine spot I muse for a lean-to shelter ).

Welcome, albeit perhaps conditionally, to the wilds of Cortiço – stay as you may …