Santa Bárbara on Santa Maria: the village loop, the Lurdes chapel and Poço da Pedreira

Most visitors pass through Santa Bárbara on the way down to the Baía de São Lourenço and never stop. That is a mistake if you like walking. The upland parish in the north-east of Santa Maria is the start of the PRC03SMA Entre a Serra e o Mar, a 9.3 km loop of about two and a half hours that takes in a sea view over the Baía do Tagarete, the only chapel in the Azores whose door faces north, the edge of the São Lourenço amphitheatre and a red quarry with a pond at the bottom. You finish among the white houses and tall chimneys where you parked. This guide covers the walk, the village and how to get there.

Santa Bárbara is one of the five parishes of Vila do Porto, the island's only municipality. It is small: 370 people at the 2021 census, down from 405 in 2011, spread over about 15 km² of pasture, woods and scattered hamlets with names like Lagos, Lagoinhas, Norte, Arrebentão and Tagarete. São Lourenço, the bay of vineyards below, belongs to the parish too. Locals call it "Sol Nascente", the rising sun, because it is the first Azorean parish to see the dawn.

Life here was hard for a long time. The Álbum Açoriano of 1903 called it the poorest parish on the island, and piped drinking water only started on 11 December 1966. What you see today is a tidy farming village: whitewashed houses with coloured trim, the tall chimneys that Santa Maria builds, a Holy Spirit império dedicated in 1900 and, at the centre, the parish church.

The church is the start and end of the loop, so you will see it either way. Its oldest record is a will dated 13 March 1537, which says the church stood on a chapel built earlier the same century. It was enlarged and repaired several times after that, in 1674, 1762 and 1825 among others, and renovated again in the late 1950s.

From outside it is a whitewashed stone church with a curved gable and a three-storey bell tower, 27.25 m long and 14.75 m wide. The main altarpiece holds Santa Bárbara, Nossa Senhora do Carmo and São Lourenço. No opening hours are published; if the door is open, step in quietly, and if it is closed, the outside is the main thing anyway. The patron saint's feast falls in December, with a mass and a procession.

"Between the hills and the sea" is an official short route of the Azores trail network: circular, graded medium, 9.3 km and about 2 hours 30 minutes according to the Azores Trails page. An older leaflet still online gives 9.7 km; the current leaflet and the trails site both say 9.3 km. The path stays between about 155 m and 321 m above the sea, so there is no big climb, but there are several short ups and downs.

The route, in the order the official leaflet describes it:

• From the church, walk west along a road that turns into a lane between pastures, and climb to Covão da Mula. From here you look back over the centre of Santa Bárbara and the spot where villagers used to dig clay for their own pots and walls.
• Drop into the valley at Lagos, with plants and birds along the slope, and cross the Ribeira do Amaro at the bottom.
• Climb north towards the locality of Norte. Turn round on the way up: this is the stretch with the view over the Baía do Tagarete and the Ilhéu das Lagoinhas, a rock islet off the north coast.
• Past Norte, the trail swings south to the Ermida de Nossa Senhora de Lurdes.
• Follow a dirt road with a signed detour to a viewpoint over the Baía de São Lourenço. Take it.
• Continue south, parallel to the bay, to Poço da Pedreira.
• Walk down past the ruins of two windmills and descend the Canada dos Atoleiros to the village centre.

The waymarks switch between white, red and yellow, where the path is shared with the Grande Rota round the island, and the yellow and red of a short route; arrows mark the junctions. The trail runs through the Santa Maria Natural Park, so close every gate you open and stay on the path. In an emergency, call 112 and give the number of the last trail post you passed.

There is no café or water point on the loop. Carry water, a waterproof and shoes with grip: the island's red clay turns slick after rain. Before you go, check the Azores Trails alerts page. On 8 October 2026 it listed two Santa Maria trails as temporarily closed, PR05SMA Costa Sul and PR04SMA Santo Espírito - Maia, and PRC03SMA was open.

The Ermida de Nossa Senhora de Lurdes stands in the open farmland at Norte. It is a small white chapel, and the trail leaflet points out that it is the only one in the archipelago with its portal facing north.

Inside, the altar is built of volcanic stone in imitation of the grotto at Lourdes, which is the reason for the dedication. As with the parish church, there are no published opening hours.

Norte had a stranger neighbour for a few decades. From 1965 the parish ceded land here for a LORAN radio-navigation station, built and run by the French military, which handed the land back on 31 December 1977. The station was abandoned in the mid-1980s.

The detour off the dirt road gives the view most people drive to the bay to see: the semicircle of the Baía de São Lourenço, a protected landscape, with vineyards on narrow terraces down the slope and the beach and natural pools at the bottom.

If the loop leaves you wanting a swim, drive down to the bay afterwards; our guide to the Baía de São Lourenço covers the road, the pools and the vineyards.

Poço da Pedreira is an abandoned quarry cut into a small volcanic cone, and one of the island's geosites in the Azores Geopark. The rock is old, deeply weathered cinder that has fused together and turned red, which is why the quarry walls stand so steep and why the cone is called Pico Vermelho, "red peak". The quarry supplied the cut stone for the traditional houses of Santa Maria.

A pond lies at the foot of the red face, and on a quiet day you will hear frogs in it. From the top of the quarry you get a wider view over the parish. Stay back from the edge of the quarry face, and do not climb the walls.

For the island's other geosites, see our geology guide to Santa Maria.

Just before you come back into the village, the trail passes the stone bases of two 19th-century windmills at Arrebentão. Only the ruined bases remain, but they are classified as a property of public interest. From here the Canada dos Atoleiros drops back to the church.

A hire car is the practical choice. The village is in the uplands north-east of Pico Alto, a short drive from Vila do Porto; park near the church, where the loop starts and ends. Because PRC03SMA is a circuit, you need no pick-up at the end.

The bus is not much help to a walker. In the timetables Transportes de Santa Maria (TSM) served in autumn 2026, route 2 between Santa Bárbara and Vila do Porto ran in the school period only, and route 1, which loops through Santa Bárbara from Malbusca, ran twice a day each way on weekdays outside term, with no service shown on Sundays. The sheets carry no year, so check with TSM before you plan around them. Otherwise, the Central de Táxis de Santa Maria (+351 296 882 199) can drop you at the church; see our guide to getting around Santa Maria.

Santa Bárbara is also on the PR06SMA Areia Branca, the 11.7 km linear trail that crosses the island from Praia Formosa over Pico Alto to the Baía de São Lourenço. It passes through the village centre and meets PRC03SMA there before dropping to the bay. If you start the Areia Branca at Pico Alto and walk down, Santa Bárbara is a natural rest stop on the way. The Pico Alto guide has the details of that end.

A good day: the loop in the morning, lunch in Vila do Porto or a picnic, and the afternoon at São Lourenço for a swim.

How long is the Entre a Serra e o Mar trail? PRC03SMA is a 9.3 km circuit, graded medium, which takes about two and a half hours. It starts and ends by the church in Santa Bárbara.

What is special about the Lurdes chapel on Santa Maria? The Ermida de Nossa Senhora de Lurdes, at Norte in the parish of Santa Bárbara, is the only chapel in the Azores whose door faces north. Its altar is built of volcanic stone to look like the grotto at Lourdes.

What is Poço da Pedreira? An abandoned quarry in a red volcanic cone called Pico Vermelho, now a geosite of the Azores Geopark. It supplied the cut stone for Santa Maria's traditional houses, and a pond lies at the foot of its red walls.

Can you get to Santa Bárbara by bus? Only just. The 2026 timetables show route 2 running in the school period only and route 1 passing twice a day each way on weekdays, with nothing on Sundays. Hire a car or take a taxi.