Açôr
Ádela
Aldeia Velha
Carrimá
Carvalhal
Coiços
Foz da Cova
Loural
Malhada
Quinta das Águias
Quinta de Belide
Ribeira de Ádela
Ribeiro de Além
Roçaio
Saião
Salgado
Sobral
Soito
Vale de Asna

Açôr sits high on the side of the Ribeira de Ádela ( the village’s name means ‘falcon’). On a clear day, it is said to be possible to see the peaks of the Serra de Estrela. Below, is the modern road. The village is mostly a single row of cottages along the side of the old narrow road to Ádela. Below the village the land has been terraced. There are a number of orange, cherry and olive trees close to the village, and a levada passes through the middle of the village for irrigation. Along the side of the levada is a sturdy wall, designed to prevent floodwaters from the hill behind washing the terraces away. This wall also provides a path down to the spring where the villagers used to draw their water. Along the path there are steps that have been cut into the rock.
On many of the buildings in the village there are vertical lines cut into the xisto stones on either side of doorways and windows. This was a form of keeping a tally – one line being struck to record one item going in or out -  and is one of several examples to be found in the more remote villages of  the mountains.

The village has a little chapel dedicated to Nossa Senhora da Saúde, built in 1924 and consecrated in 1936. The shrine, recently restored, shows Saint Michael the Archangel.
The ‘lagar’ or olive press was situated between Ádela and Açor, on the little hill between Barroco do Porto dos Baqueiros and Val do Meios, at the side of the road which used to link the two villages, which you can still travel by foot. It was built here in 1902. It is said that there was a big cork oak tree that was perfect for making a beam for the press, but too heavy to be transported, so they built the press where the cork tree was.  The press belonged to the families of Ádela, but served both villages. The building of the ‘tulhas’ followed the construction of the lagar: little houses of xisto with stone roofs  - one for each family – where they could store their olives preserved in salt until it was time for them to be pressed.
The predominant economic activity in the village has traditionally been subsistence agriculture and sheep and goat herding. Alongside the roads you can still see the terraces and fields, many of them hardly perceptible in the undergrowth. Next to the fields are sheep and goat pens, some still standing, and some collapsed. They were used mainly for the animals to graze the weeds, and to produce manure necessary to enrich the land. They also served to store utensils and frequently contained, for example, old ladders for collecting the olives.
There also used to be bees and beehives in the village producing excellent honey derived mostly from different species of heather. Pine-resin collecting bowls have been found, so we know this was also an activity in the area, and with the abundance of strawberry trees (arbutus) locally, an excellent liqueur was produced.

In the past, there would have been some considerable activity in the village, with the growing and harvesting of the crops, taking the corn down to Colmeal for grinding and returning with the flour, transporting necessary equipment and materials into the village – all the daily necessities of life. On Sunday the villagers would go to mass in Colmeal, leaving their clogs hidden in a bramble thicket or a tree stump at Porto Ribeiro. 
The author Lisete de Matos, to whom we are indebted for much of the information we have about Ádela and Açor, gives a delightful glimpse into local superstition, recorded at Christmas, 1989:  three women are having a conversation about werewolves (something of a pre-occupation in these mountainous parts, where actual wolves roamed within living memory). One woman claims that if seven sons should be born consecutively in a family, the seventh must be named Maurice – if not, he will inevitably become a werewolf. In the past, she says, people probably did not realise this, and so they had werewolves!
Source: ‘GENTE DA SERRA Do seu Quotidiano e Costumes’ por Lisete P. Almeida de Matos, data de Edição de 1990

Information also reproduced by kind permission of Lisete P. Almeida de Matos from ‘Caminhada “Trilhos da Ribeira de Ádela”: Um Olhar’ published in the Comarca de Arganil on 15th of May 2008 and at  http://www.upfc-colmeal-gois.blogspot.com/ on 7th of April  2008