The Poço Negro (black pool) is a piece of the river Paiva set in a fantastic landscape and involved in great mystery. The legend goes that this well is deep, very deep, and that in the depths of its waters are two tunnels, one with a deadly gas, and the other with a treasure guarded by an enchanted Moorish girl. Says the popular story that during all these years, only one man managed to remove the treasure from the dark depths but, overcome by fatigue, he fell asleep in a rock nearby. When he woke up, the treasure was gone, taken back to the bottom of the pool by the beautiful Moorish girl. Some say that even today you can hear the singing of the enchanted Moorish girl, and hear the crying of the poor man if you stand next to Poço Negro.
A rare beauty involves the Poço Negro and its surroundings. The lush vegetation of its galleries and slopes is rich and varied. The black alder and the ash dominate the riparian corridors, and thermophilic shrubs like the green olive tree and the myrtle emerge here and there, traces of paleotropical vegetation. Here too we find the dorset heath,the endemic pedunculate anarrhinum or the rare feather pink. Walking through the river, we can see diverse valuable wildlife such as the rare and protected river cruisers dragonfly, the beautiful demoiselle, the elusive white-throated dipper, the otter or the pyrenean desman, low profile mammal of difficult detection.
Over time, the populations of the Paiva valley always took advantage of the river’s water strength, through the many watermills and fulling watermills. The watermills can still be seen along the river and its tributaries. The stomps, now extinct, served the production of linen and wool. Here, next to Melo bridge lays probably the biggest Paiva valley watermill: the Melo watermill.
