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You’d be amazed just how much is still out there, unknown or forgotten. I’ve got around a fair bit over the years, and I’ve seen some incredible things that exi

You’d be amazed just how much is still out there, unknown or forgotten. I’ve got around a fair bit over the years, and I’ve seen some incredible things that exist on no map, no online resource, in some cases not even in the minds of locals. I’m currently living in northern Portugal, which, as part of Western Europe, you’d think would be pretty well explored - but no. The local medieval castle, which is shockingly obvious sat atop a volcanic plug, was not recognised or documented until 1979 - and only in the 1990s did someone realise that this place was that place referred to in various historical documents. The locals knew about it, of course, but it was unremarkable to them. When we moved here, we wanted an old building to restore, somewhere surrounded by nature. We talked to realtors, to locals, young and old, nobody knew of such a place. I pored over satellite imagery, chose some spots to go for a ramble. Discovered a medieval watermill - a series of them, in fact. Talked to locals again, to the council - nobody had a clue they existed, and the land was public land - and they agreed to sell me one of them. Since we started work we’ve had a little trickle of people wandering down to say hello, and unanimously they’ve all lived there all of their lives, and they’re all agog when they see that this place exists. Exploring the land around the mill has been a blast - mines, from prehistoric to medieval, various ruins, water management channels, terraces, roads, all sorts - and nobody knew any of it was there - and the wildlife is like living in a zoo. Tortoises, snakes, foxes, deer, big damn lizards, eagles, you name it - and every time I wander up a random track I find something new, even if I’ve walked that way before. There’s a huge amount around, everywhere, to explore - you just have to go where people aren’t, and observe.

capableweb 7y ago
That's very interesting, thank you for sharing that story, makes me feel that information about the world is still young and there is yet things we have discovered. Thank you!
mkl 7y ago
That's really interesting. Have you got archaeologists involved?
- madaxe_again 7y ago
  Not yet - we’ve only been here about four months, and we’re still discovering stuff all the time. I am considering doing an archaeology summer camp this or next year, however, and am chatting to a lecturer friend about the prospect. It’s a fascinating site - there are traces of a ford, which is interesting, as the bridge (3km downstream) was built in the 1200s, and presumably replaced the ford. I think the majority of what we’re seeing is ~1200 - ~1880s, but there is a cave way up a hillside that I went for a ferret down that was suspiciously man-sized, and had an antler poking out through the mud on the floor, at which point I decided to leave it be until someone who knows more than me looks at it - as I suspect it was an antler pick, which would place the mine in the Neolithic at latest. There were also Romans in this neck of the woods, but I’ve seen nothing that has said Roman to me yet. Either way, the site has evidently seen quite a bit of activity over the ages, only falling into disuse in the early 20th century - I found a taxation tag embedded in a gnarly old olive tree that identified it as being planted in 1914, and it looked like it hadn’t been pruned ever, meaning someone probably planted it and then got the Spanish flu.
wink 7y ago
As someone who has only ever lived in a European city, this is very hard to imagine :) Do you have any ballpark figures as in how remote those watermills are? Like.. next road is 10km? 50km? Are there even roads to your property?
- madaxe_again 7y ago
  The region is Tras Os Montes (“Beyond the Mountains”), and is a rural backwater - mountainous terrain, and going 10km as the crow flies by paved road is 40km. Most of the roads here are unpaved trackway. The nearest paved road is about 5km by track from the mill - the bottom km was impassible when we found the place, but nothing a day with a bulldozer and a chainsaw couldn’t fix - it looked like about 60 years of growth. The track down the valley is steep and winding, and looks like it goes nowhere. Despite being at the bottom of a deep, steep valley, we get an almost full day of light, as the mill is on the north bank of a large inverted U bend in the river - the sun rises over the valley to our left, grazes the hills to the south, and sets over the valley to the right. Someone in the 1300s really thought about where to put the structure, as 50m either way along the bank gets shaded way more. Right now we’re having to walk in and out, as we had prodigious rain in December, which both highlighted our flood risk (overtopped the roof!) and made a steep, poorly drained section of the road collapse - I’ve spent the past week teaching myself how to make a pitched stone road - nice Neolithic technique, and means all the materials I need are within spitting distance of the road - rock, gravel. The next mill, which is about 1.5km downstream of us, has no road or track, just a steep path. I am still scratching my head over how they built them - the lower courses of stones in the walls must weigh five tonnes apiece - huge boulders, moved purely with human and animal power. After seeing the river go crazy last month, I understand why - the force was sufficient to uproot large trees, to wash away the car, to completely scout the earth to bare rock - but the mill couldn’t have cared less. It’s good timing, insofar as we hadn’t done too much work yet, and now we know we need to ensure everything structural in there can deal with immersion, and everything else needs to be portable. Constraint, sure, but an interesting one. While shovelling muck there yesterday (temporarily renting a house after being flooded out) I heard a loud plop over the roar of the weir - and saw two otters hunting crayfish in the mill pond - I could see them flipping rocks on the bottom and grabbing them, as the flood has washed away sediments and organics, leaving the water crystal clear. This is the stuff that makes me persevere!
lioeters 7y ago
Thanks for sharing your story, sounds fun! Most inspiring comment of the day for me.
andrepd 7y ago
I have a similar experience, in Central Portugal: we found an undiscovered/undocumented site with neolithic ruins. Nothing major or too well-conserved, but still, it's quite stunning to realise that trekking in the summer in the woods almost in your backyard, and less than 10km from a city of 100,000, you can find such a thing :)

capableweb 7y ago

That's very interesting, thank you for sharing that story, makes me feel that information about the world is still young and there is yet things we have discovered. Thank you!

mkl 7y ago

That's really interesting. Have you got archaeologists involved?

madaxe_again 7y ago
Not yet - we’ve only been here about four months, and we’re still discovering stuff all the time. I am considering doing an archaeology summer camp this or next year, however, and am chatting to a lecturer friend about the prospect. It’s a fascinating site - there are traces of a ford, which is interesting, as the bridge (3km downstream) was built in the 1200s, and presumably replaced the ford. I think the majority of what we’re seeing is ~1200 - ~1880s, but there is a cave way up a hillside that I went for a ferret down that was suspiciously man-sized, and had an antler poking out through the mud on the floor, at which point I decided to leave it be until someone who knows more than me looks at it - as I suspect it was an antler pick, which would place the mine in the Neolithic at latest. There were also Romans in this neck of the woods, but I’ve seen nothing that has said Roman to me yet. Either way, the site has evidently seen quite a bit of activity over the ages, only falling into disuse in the early 20th century - I found a taxation tag embedded in a gnarly old olive tree that identified it as being planted in 1914, and it looked like it hadn’t been pruned ever, meaning someone probably planted it and then got the Spanish flu.

wink 7y ago

As someone who has only ever lived in a European city, this is very hard to imagine :) Do you have any ballpark figures as in how remote those watermills are? Like.. next road is 10km? 50km? Are there even roads to your property?

madaxe_again 7y ago
The region is Tras Os Montes (“Beyond the Mountains”), and is a rural backwater - mountainous terrain, and going 10km as the crow flies by paved road is 40km. Most of the roads here are unpaved trackway. The nearest paved road is about 5km by track from the mill - the bottom km was impassible when we found the place, but nothing a day with a bulldozer and a chainsaw couldn’t fix - it looked like about 60 years of growth. The track down the valley is steep and winding, and looks like it goes nowhere. Despite being at the bottom of a deep, steep valley, we get an almost full day of light, as the mill is on the north bank of a large inverted U bend in the river - the sun rises over the valley to our left, grazes the hills to the south, and sets over the valley to the right. Someone in the 1300s really thought about where to put the structure, as 50m either way along the bank gets shaded way more. Right now we’re having to walk in and out, as we had prodigious rain in December, which both highlighted our flood risk (overtopped the roof!) and made a steep, poorly drained section of the road collapse - I’ve spent the past week teaching myself how to make a pitched stone road - nice Neolithic technique, and means all the materials I need are within spitting distance of the road - rock, gravel. The next mill, which is about 1.5km downstream of us, has no road or track, just a steep path. I am still scratching my head over how they built them - the lower courses of stones in the walls must weigh five tonnes apiece - huge boulders, moved purely with human and animal power. After seeing the river go crazy last month, I understand why - the force was sufficient to uproot large trees, to wash away the car, to completely scout the earth to bare rock - but the mill couldn’t have cared less. It’s good timing, insofar as we hadn’t done too much work yet, and now we know we need to ensure everything structural in there can deal with immersion, and everything else needs to be portable. Constraint, sure, but an interesting one. While shovelling muck there yesterday (temporarily renting a house after being flooded out) I heard a loud plop over the roar of the weir - and saw two otters hunting crayfish in the mill pond - I could see them flipping rocks on the bottom and grabbing them, as the flood has washed away sediments and organics, leaving the water crystal clear. This is the stuff that makes me persevere!

lioeters 7y ago

Thanks for sharing your story, sounds fun! Most inspiring comment of the day for me.

andrepd 7y ago

I have a similar experience, in Central Portugal: we found an undiscovered/undocumented site with neolithic ruins. Nothing major or too well-conserved, but still, it's quite stunning to realise that trekking in the summer in the woods almost in your backyard, and less than 10km from a city of 100,000, you can find such a thing :)