Located only 20 minutes away south from Peniche, Portugal's geological paradise, Paimogo is a charming narrow beach, located by the Paimogo Fort, at the heart of a deeply wild natural scenery. However, this is a beach somehow difficult to reach with no surveillance during the official Summer season. Therefore, visitors must take into consideration that Paimogo is not a bathing beach.
The Paimogo Fort was built in 1674 by order of António Luís de Menezes, Count of Cantanhede, also known as the Marquis of Marialva and hero of the Restoration wars. Its mission was to defend the beaches near the fort in order to prevent enemy troops from landing. The fort was part of the second fortified defence line, which began at the Praça Forte da Vila de Peniche and stretched as far as Barra do Tejo. From the fort you can see Peniche to the north and Areia Branca beach to the south.
Dinos everywhere ... 152 millions years ago!
The cliffs of Paimogo Beach tell us that, in the Late Jurassic period (around 152 million years ago), there were large rivers here that carried large amounts of sediment. Many fossils of dinosaurs, turtles, crocodiles and even small mammals from that time are found in these sediments.
One of these traces is a large dinosaur nest, where eggshells and some embryo bones have been preserved. Eggshells and embryo bones are very delicate, fossilising only under very special conditions. Therefore, they are very rare finds and important to science.
Saramago on the rocks
In 2020, on the day José Saramago would celebrate its 98th birthday – November 16th – Alexandre Farto aka VHILS paid a tribute to the Nobel Prize award-winning writer by sculpting his face on the rocks of a pier in Paimogo beach in Lourinhã. However, the face of the Portuguese writer can only be seen under special light and tide conditions.
"So often we need a whole lifetime in order to change our life, we think a great deal, weigh things up and vacillate, then we go back to the beginning, we think and think, we displace ourselves on the tracks of time with a circular movement, like those clouds of dust, dead leaves, debris, that have no strength for anything more, better by far that we should live in a land of hurricanes.“ The Stone Raft, José Saramago
