The marvellous Green Coast is in the south-western coast of Sardinia which is about 47 km long, from Capo Frasca, in the northern, part to Capo Pecora, in the south one. It preserves a fascinating and uncontaminated nature offering a landscape rich in ancient beauties and strong smells, the Mediterranean scrub and the extraordinary sea where the west wind is the protagonist.
The coast offers a wide range of conformations, from sandy beaches to rocky coves and high cliffs
until the golden dunes.
Our farm is near the SIC – Community Interest area of “Is Arenas- S’Acqua ‘e s’Ollastu”.
The endemic plants of Green Coast are perfectly adapted to the sandy environment of the dunes. Here live century-old junipers, lentisks, gorses and euphorbias together with tamarisks and rushes along the rivers. In this exclusive ecosystem also live the Sardinian deer and the turtle Caretta Caretta which lays eggs in this place in June and July nights.
Hills are covered by Mediterranean scrub, such as the juniper, which give the dunes more stability. The most important inhabitant, here, is the Sardinian deer which is, nowadays, very loved by environmentalists and also by local people, who consider the deer as the symbol of this territory and an instrument to enhance the econmy of the whole area.
The whole Green Coast area is part of Arbus territory, known since ancient times for the richness of its soil where, from the half of the 18th century until 1991, an exploitation industry had developed. These areas, which are inside the Geomineral Historic and Environmental Park of Sardinia, nowadays are like timeless landscapes made up of house ruins, sites, scattered shafts and rusty wagons.
Fantasy together with elderly memory, take people in the past time where men and animals, machineries and wagons moved together during a hard work, which reflects the industrial age. Montevecchio mine is one of the eight mining sites of the Geomineral Historic and Environmental Park of Sardinia, aknowledged in 1997 by the Unesco as the first park in the world network of Geos/ Geopoarks established by Unesco to protect and enhance the techincal, scientific, historical, cultural and environmental property of this sites.
Ingurtosu is a hamlet of Arbus municipality and together with Montevecchio, is one of the most important Sardinian mine. Its name comes from the Sardinian name of a bird “gutturgiu”, the beared vulture whiche lived in this area.
Nowadays, it is a ruined village where only few people live but in the past it was populated until the end of the ’60s by nearly 5 thousand people. It was the directional centre of the mine of Ingurtosu and Gennamari, which were part of the greater mining complex called Vein of Montevecchio, from which lead, zinc and silver were extracted.
Along the valley which joins the village with the sea there are several shafts, among which Gal shaft which has recently been restored and turned into a museum of the miners’ life and the ravishing ruins of Brassey’s washery, built in Naracauli in 1900, when the owner of the mine was the English nobleman lord Brassey. Built at the end of a valley parallel to Ingurtosu, Pitzinurri village hosts Villa Wright, the house of the director’s assistant when English owned the mine.
