Hopefully today’s heritage post will draw calmer reactions than yesterday’s finds in the museum. I thought I’d start by asking you if you know what these circles are?

When we first explored mainland Portugal it took us a while to figure them out. Partly because although they are regularly seen in many of the villages in the Algarvian hills, they are usually just stones jutting out of the walls. Sometimes without even a hole.

A pedra de amarrar do burro

A few years ago I found a rather lovely poem about them, you can read it here on my Portuguese blog where you will also find an example of what I meant about stones jutting out. There’s another example here and it is surrounded by some rather lovely orchids and spring flowers. Some of you may have already determined what they are from my Portuguese caption, but if not do visit my other two posts to discover what they are.

102 thoughts

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        1. Guess i9t reflects the poverty of the country. They had to save iron for projects where only iron would do, and in the countryside a rock in the wall worked for this task. I agree though very odd to the rest of us.

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        5. You are so right about them being beautiful. Greece and Portugal are very similar in terms of GDP, but Portugal is a very unequal country with huge disparity between the rich and the poor. Although having said that Greece also has a huge number of citizens living below the poverty line.

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  12. I was intrigued enough to check out the link. I was almost right. Our west and in some old parts out east, you see something like that. Not made of stone. Usually carved from wood, but used to tether horses or horses and a cart. Great photograph and very interesting. Seems like an awful lot of work for a way to tether a donkey, don’t you think?

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    1. Yay for working it out – and yes these are the smartest ones we have ever seen. Must have been a rich merchant in the building!

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