I thought a lot before publishing this post.
In the beginning of October I was in Leiria for a weekend city break to celebrate 8 years of marriage to Mr. Beyond Lisbon.
Besides the city I also wanted to explore some of the green landscapes in the area. One of the places that I looked up was this: Lagoa de Ervedeira.
A natural lagoon, which was also a favourite spot of many people in the region, particularly families with kids, Lagoa de Ervedeira reminded me of so many Summers spent near pine trees – the smell of a forest of pine trees under the Summer sun is something unique!
At the time there was a fire some 20 or 30 km away from Leiria (the sky had a weird light, that you can see in the photos) and, some two weeks later, a big chunk of green in the area of Leiria just… burned. Completely.
Much of Lagoa de Ervedeira and the surrounding green area did not escape the flames. I was totally devastated when I heard about it…
Should I blog about the way this place was *before* the fire or should I keep this to myself, since this place is not longer the way I’m showing it? I decided I should keep a memory of the good times.
I’ll be sharing more about this place soon!
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Beyond Lisbon 
It is sad, but may the memories stay with us… It will become the same in the future… I have hope
I don’t think we can afford to lose hope.
I can’t bring myself to blog about the devastation around me. It’s too vast. I did consider it but I just don’t want to.
I understand. I thought a lot before doing this because it didn’t feel right… But it also feels like I’m preserving the memory of the place. I have to admit, though, that it feels too painful to go back to the places that burned down.
[…] giving you a little context about Lagoa de Ervedeira on my previous post I’l be sharing today some more specific information about it. The photos, unfortunately, show […]
So sorry to hear about the fire – hope the area can regenerate quickly. We do get wild fires (or bush fires) here in south Western Australia and miraculously the vegetation does regrow relatively quickly though obviously it takes a while to get back to its original state. Looks such a beautiful area 😃
Thank you so much for your concern! 💚 The problem is that these fires are the result of criminal intentions… And pine trees + hot dry weather means you don’t really need a lot to start a fire 😞 the big problem here is that the bushes and small vegetation *might* regrow quickly, but trees take several years to regrow!
Yes naturally it will take quite a long time for the trees to grow though the smaller bushes and vegetation do bounce back quickly. Very sad when so often the fires are deliberately started and extremely dangerous too 😦