Access coming from:

- Manteigas (± 23 km) – N338 and N339 (direction Loriga);

- Covilhã (± 24 km) – N339;

- Seia (± 25 km) – N339;

- Gouveia (± 35 km) – N232 and N339.

Road N339, km 26. GPS: 40.3408333, -7.6163889

This set of outcrops covers the area known as Salgadeiras, east of the road N339, and you can see there a group of small lagoons. The slabs and blocks, that once have covered these depressions, were ripped out by the passage of ice, polishing and striating great extensions of the granite surface. Looking carefully you can see that even the vertices and edges of the granite blocks were rounded and polished by the glacier. To the touch, the regularity and softness of the polished surface shows this phenomenon well. When observed at dawn and dusk, the more polished surfaces even show streaks indicating the direction the ice have moved.

Observing the surrounding landscape, you can see the rock regularity, the absence of either loose rock blocks or the altered mantle of the gravel that was cleared by the ice.

At the top of the “gate” some blocks of porphyroid granite (meaning with great crystals) of 2 micas are visible, contrasting with muscovite granite on which they settle, corresponding the first ones to blocks transported by the glacier.

The highland bogs present (and protected) provide important elements in order to understand how the environment in the Holocene would be (i.e. for the last 18,000 years).

Glacier - mass of ice formed by the recrystallization of snow that flows forward, or has flowed at some time in the past.