"It is undoubted that from the Roman route from Olisipo to Bracara Augusta, from Classical Antiquity, to the medieval Estrada Coimbrã, the lands of Alvaiázere were a privileged space for travelers, pilgrims, couriers, muleteers and even military bodies.
Several reasons contributed to this circumstance: the location of this region in an intermediate space between important population clusters; the advantage that, in a time of scarcity of bridges, constituted the absence of large watercourses that were difficult to pass; the convenience that, in a time when many of the paths were made by walking, due to the dryness of the porous limestone soils of the Alvaiázere-Ansião-Sicó mountains when compared to the clayey and muddy terrain of the coast, cut by countless lines of perennial water that dotted a large part of the coastal strip that since the Mondego extended to the Tagus"