Panoramic

Geossítio 1 Malhada Detrainment

Inspiration written in the landscape…

Suspended over the northern slopes of the Serra da Freita, the Miradouro do Detrelo da Malhada invites you to enjoy the mountainous landscape of northern Portugal. The highest point of the Serra da Freita is located nearby. From here, on clear days, you can see the Serra do Marão, the mountain ranges that make up the Peneda-Gerês National Park or the Serras do Porto Park. To the west, the mountainous area gives way to the coastline, with the urban areas of Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia, Espinho and Santa Maria da Feira standing out, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean. Straight ahead, the mountain slope culminates in the Arouca valley, where the historic center around the Monastery of Arouca has settled and grown, flanked by fertile agricultural land fed by the waters of the River Arda and its tributaries. Senhora da Mó rises between the Arouca valley and the Moldes valley to the east, and protects the Paiva valley to the northeast.

One of the geotourist walking routes of the UNESCO World Geopark Arouca passes through this geosite. Classified as a Small Route, PR16 is 12 km long, circular and takes you to discover the granite landscape of the Freita plateau. The mythical trail races “Maratona Filhos da Freita”, “Dolorosa de Moldes” and “Ultra Trail da Serra da Freita” also take place here.

Informação Geológica

The circular viewpoint of Detrelo da Malhada sits on metamorphic rocks: mottled schists (schist-grauvaceous metasediments), verticalized as if they were protective walls of the Serra da Freita.

The steep northern slope of the Serra da Freita and the fertile valley of the River Arda (where the town of Arouca is located) stretch out in front of us. The Arouca valley (known geomorphologically as the Arouca complex alveolus) is carved out of a magmatic rock – the Arouca quartzodiorite, which is very prone to chemical weathering. Its bottom has accumulated sediments resulting from the erosion of the mountain ranges that surround the valley and which have been retained here, largely due to the hardness and resistance to erosion of the “Pedra Má” (a hornblende rock, located on the border between the parishes of Rossas and Várzea), a geosite of the UNESCO World Geopark Arouca, located on the Arda Ecovia.

The incision of the River Arda (Douro River Basin) at the end of the Cenozoic, as well as the formation of the fertile soils of the valley that we know today, was decisive for the establishment of the Monastery of Arouca, as well as for the development of this territory.

The view over the northern slope of Serra da Freita preserves different levels of erosion, which show the movement of the blocks that raised Serra da Freita, and it is possible to distinguish, with some clarity, the contact between the metasediments and the quartzodiorite of Arouca, marked by differences in relief and vegetation. The installation of the quartzodiorite pluton induced a marked contact metamorphism, evidenced here by the presence of mottled schists.