Overview

This is our celebration of an amazing, somewhat undiscovered, wild corner of Europe where the cork oaks and holm oaks grow and give savanna character to an arid landscape that looks hard and difficult, but which glows with soft colours, azure-winged birds, and can turn into carpets of rich colours in spring. The place reverberates with big exciting wildlife - Iberian Lynx, Wild Boar, thousands of Cranes in winter, and gigantic Bustards, along with innumerable big soaring eagles and vultures. It looks wild, it acts wild and yet it is a man-made landscape: the wondrous growth forms of the trees are to a large degree pruned that way to maximise a harvest of rich acorns which fall to feed the black Iberian pigs and produce the tastiest Jamón in the land; the ground in between the trees is ploughed, planted and left fallow and cut back again in a gentle four year cycle of crops, flowers, grasses and shrubs leading to some of the richest plant diversities within each small area of land. And the beautiful thick, spongey, lichen-coloured bark on the Cork Oaks (which holds back the spread of fire from harming this vegetation and is playing an increasingly important role with climate change) is carefully protected and harvested every nine years when the rich red sangria-coloured trunks are laid bare and then darken to deep burgundy again over the years. Removing the bark does not kill these trees. It supports the huge cork industries of Portugal (Montados) and Spain (Dehesas). In this world where wildlife and agriculture are continually colliding we just found the harmony of people and wildlife and the inspiring paintable landscapes that we experienced across Alentejo and Extremadura a total tonic! Couple this with a trip with friends through some of the best wine regions and rural cultures and communities, tracing back many thousands of years, and you have a recipe for a great holiday.

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9781738543915

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