A house, a garden, a forest and complete privacy
- Introduction
-
The Peak Cottage is located at the Pico Alto locality in a small
parish named Santa that belongs to the village of Porto Moniz. It's
a recent construction that was designed and built from scratch,
with architectural strokes of a rustic simplicity and made in a
traditional Madeirian style, in order to create a relaxing
environment and to provide a pleasant comfort, healthful rest and a
self catering accommodation to those who intend to recover the lost
energies from the active urban life.
- Rustic Style
-
There is a predominance of wood, brickwork and some old,
traditional tools and objects, once forgotten, in the attics of
local people (from our family). For this reason it fits in the
rustic tourism category.
-
Built in an open plan, the ground floor combines a living room,
a WC, a kitchenette and a traditional fireplace. The upper level
consists of a bedroom with a bathroom. Click here to see more photos of the cottage. The ambient temperature varies between 13º, in the winter, and 27º in the summer.
- Supermarket and restaurant at hand and complete privacy
-
The house is isolated at the edge of the forest, with the nearest
neighbours three minutes away (on foot). Ten minutes away (also on
foot) you can find a local supermarket and also a restaurant if you
don't intend to use our facilities to cook.
- Walk over the clouds
-
It will take approximately one hour to drive from Funchal to Santa,
if, after Ribeira Brava, one goes trough the Rosário tunnel
that precedes the village of São Vicente. It will take 10
minutes more, in case one goes trough the alternative route:
Encumeada - Paul da Serra.
-
You can enjoy landscapes of rare beauty, characteristic of
Madeira''s Paul da Serra upland/plateau, like the frequent "seas of
clouds" (photo on the right), and others no less spetacular like the one
depicted in the photo on the left.
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The sea at hand
- Natural (sea water) swimming pool
-
The village - at seaside - is around 10 minutes
away from the Peak Cottage (by car), offering several restaurants, other
supermarkets and a few shops. Here, the main attraction is a natural
(sea water) swimming pool (photo on the right). The sea views are outstanding.
- Black Sand Beach
-
A few miles away (in Seixal village) one can find a black sand
beach (photo on the left, taken in the winter). In Madeira
Portugal beaches can be of a breathtaking beauty. The forest, near from
the country, mountain and the sea, with many possibilities of
strolls and hiking paths, surrounds the Peak Cottage, where one can
watch nature and wildlife very closely. Nearby you will find
levadas and water falls.
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Explore Nature
- Levada walks
-
Levada is the name given to the irrigation channels that cross
the entire island. These channels take water from places where it's
abundant to others where it's not. Most levadas offer very
beautiful walks, some pictured in this page (see an example on the right),
where you can adventure yourself.
- Madeira's Natural Forest - Laurissilva
-
The Laurissilva occupies more than 20% of the surface of the
island. You can find the majority of it on the northern side of
Madeira Island (thus near the cottage), due to the lower
temperatures and higher humidity.
-
This is the biggest area of Laurissilva in the world and is said
to be the best preserved. The word Laurissilva comes from the Latin
"silva", which means forest, and from "Laurus"
(lauraceae), family of the arboreal species that inhabits the forest.
Nowadays, it's classified as a "UNESCO World Heritage"
site. Apart from its dazzling beauty, its natural puzzle of shapes
and shades of green reveals all the dynamism that is typical of a
balanced ecological system.
More info.
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Organic Agriculture
- Local Agriculture
-
Near the cottage, we enter the countryside, where one can find
fields, filled with socalcos (local term meaning a terrace or piece
of land on the side of a mountain or hill sustained by a wall) used
for local agriculture which is still mainly manual. Trough frequent
dialogue, we alert the local population about the inauspicious
consequences to the environment, of using chemical products in
agriculture. Our long-term objective is the wide spread
implementation of organic agriculture.
- Organic vegetable garden
-
In the back of the cottage we have our little biological
vegetable-garden with cabbage, parsley, aromatical herbs and tea
herbs planted. Unfortunately, some birds have been eating our
plants. To minimize this drawback, we placed a scarecrow. Therefore
we believe our initiative fits also in the categories of
ecotourism, agritourism and sustainable rural tourism.
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Last modified in 2012/02/19
hits since 2001/08/26
|Em português: 
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