When we were children, we always went at the end of the summer and before returning to school to the house that would become 9Arches.
The problem was that we stayed for a whole month and our parents had to find clever ways to keep us busy.
The summer I remember best was the one when it was decided that we would all “grow rich.”
First, great stories were told about how Phoenicians, Greeks and the Carthaginians had landed on Portugal’s shores in search of precious stones, way back before baby Jesus was even born.
Then, came the legend of the great Roman people who believed earth beyond the Pillars of Hercules – which was Lusitania (today’s Portugal) – was so full of riches, that its land practically sprouted gold.
By this time, we were all terribly excited, especially when we found out that the first Emperor’s name was Augustus, just like our revered old uncle Augusto from the nearby village of Moinhos.
So, we all asked: “How can we possibly find this gold?”
And the answer came easily: “In the river.”
So, we pictured ourselves as cowboys in America and promptly accepted to carry all the necessary gear our parents needed for never-ending picnics by the river.
And for the whole month, we explored the three rivers around the house – the Alva, the coldest of them all; the Ceira, the warmest of them all and the Mondego, the deepest of them all.
We would look for any stones which shone because there was gold in it, and today our library shelves still show remnants of that summer.
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Did you know that at a short distance from 9Arches, in Serra da Lousā, you can still find one of the earliest gold mines found in Portugal?
These were found by our friends the Romans in 600 A.D. in Roda Cimeira village and are rich in gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, copper, antimony and tungsten. They were explored since then up into the 1970’s and re-opened in 2014.
