Trip to Praia do Aterro in front of Petrogal | Portugal

The place we are going to visit today is a 5 min drive from the place where i work and is one of my escapes during lunch time ☺

In the next posts I will cover the entire coast of the municipality of Matosinhos and nothing better than starting with the least desirable place and improving from here.
But why less desirable? Aren't we talking about the Portuguese coast? Of beaches, sea, dunes and incredible landscapes? Yes and no and you will understand why!

Today I had lunch in an instant and took off towards the Aterro beach, a beach bathed by the Atlantic Ocean located in Leça da Palmeira municipality of Matosinhos.
The beach has an extensive sandy of 1.1 km and is a very popular place for lovers of surfing and other water sports due to the rough sea caused by the extremely rocky terrain that forms a certain distance from the coast, even being limited to south by a rock formation near the mouth of Ribeira da Boa Nova.
On this beach, as in practically all the beaches in the north of Portugal, great care is needed when entering the sea, because the foot is lost near the wave breaking, and the slope is very steep.

The beauty of the rocky area that can be seen between tides, also gives it a special characteristic and on top of all this, it is still awarded with the blue flag and an environment of natural vegetation that surrounds the entire beach, which makes it a unique place, but of course we are in winter and the rough sea ends up bringing a lot of objects to the sand and in ways that it does not have that typical beach aspect ready to receive thousands of bathers :P

All of this would be wonderful but… it is impossible to enjoy all this without the colossus who is on the opposite side being able to go unnoticed when looking, especially for those who use the walkways along the coast to go for walks or runs with the sea ​​to accompany.

For those who like all kinds of photography like me, it would be inevitable to come by and not register this contrast so evident between these two realities, between nature in its purest state and that tangle of pipes, steel and chimneys.
There are hectares and hectares of folds and hinges that constitute the Matosinhos refinery, an asset of Petrogal, a company of the Galp Energia group, right there by the sea, to disagree with a landscape that wants to be virgin and immaculate, but this is a testament to life, that we choose to live.

More than once, this same beach has been the victim of “accidental” discharges of polluting hydrocarbon products and recently a ETAR “Wastewater Treatment Station” was built right next to the beach.
I didn't want to make this post a pretext to criticize the policies practiced on these sides, but this ETAR is a national shame for the location chosen for its construction taking into account the level of pollutants, namely heavy metals that it emits and the nauseating smell that it releases, only a mediocre city council executive can let this go on forever.
This post ends at the time I was passing in front of the ETAR and I had to go back because the smell is really unbearable….

However, people continue to frequent the beach and give a good qualification in the summary of reviews on google maps, pointing as main positive points the easy access, good parking, the extension of the beach and the proximity to the bars and restaurants.
Some brave and more demanding ones point out some of the points that I mentioned here as more than enough to stay well away from this place.
It is definitely a sadness that certain attacks on public health and nature conservation are allowed in exchange for votes and political support.

Later on we will also have the opportunity to dazzle a “work of art” that was acquired by direct adjustment by a few thousand, to help “clash” the landscape… but we will be there soon.
Tomorrow I will carry out a new registration further ahead between Praia Azul, Capela da Boa Nova and Farol da Boa Nova, without refineries or ETAR to spoil the landscape.

Overall it was a well-spent lunch hour, and that´s all for today :)

See you soon

Thank you for watching :)

All photos presented in this article are my own

@aleister