The olive groves changed color without warning — yellow edges, olives painted, the silvery-green of the leaves turning with the whims of a wind that is no longer the wind of August.

The staircase is climbed slowly, step by step, up to 760 meters. And when you reach the top of the Nossa Senhora da Assunção mountain, in Vilas Boas, the horizon opens up all at once: within a radius of one hundred kilometers, you can see the Montesinho Natural Park, Mirandela, the Bornes mountain range and, far away, already in Spain, Sanabria.