Attractions and Places To See around Prádena Del Rincón - Top 20

A beautiful Black Village in La Sierra Poble in Madrid. Clean, well-kept, with good hospitality services, it is the beginning and end of multiple routes, but it also has a very extensive exhibition of outdoor statues of all types nearby.

On the way is the traditional apiary of the population surrounded by a stone wall to prevent the entry of animals. The use of clay, wood, quartzite, slate and other materials from the terrain produces a mimetic architecture, fully integrated into the environment to the point of going unnoticed because it is part of the rural landscape. The most characteristic auxiliary constructions of black architecture are the sheds, the farrowing pens and the fences, in most cases they serve to control the cattle and defend the mowing pastures, the apiaries and the fruit crops, but they also serve to delimit the traditional paths and the old roads that the inhabitants of the towns of the mountain valleys have used for centuries to communicate. The herrenes or fenced plots between the oak meadows are built using walls of rough slate blocks, alternating with large slate slabs or raft boats, finishing off the fence with other horizontal slabs or covering boats, giving the construction a primitive and megalithic appearance. . The hives are made of hollow oak trunks, covered with slate slabs and sealed with tin sheets and adobe. On the way to the town you can also see the reproduction of a traditional coal cellar, a reminder of the old lifestyles and trades of other times. On one side of the building there is an interpretive panel of the charcoal burner's trade.

La Hiruela is a mountain town that suffered a dramatic population abandonment in the first decades of the 20th century. The isolation and remoteness of the main communication routes, together with the scarcity of resources in a thankless mountain range, caused a constant emigration of the population towards the big cities to leave a territory where rural life was difficult. The region of the black towns of Madrid and Guadalajara was known as the “sierra pobre”, in comparison with the “sierra rica” of upper Lozoya and the upper basin of the Manzanares and Guadarrama rivers. The rise of active tourism and recreational activities in the environment have caused a resurgence of a new lifestyle dedicated to active leisure and rural tourism products. Crafts, gastronomy, ethnography, hiking, mountain biking, landscape interpretation or nature photography, among many other things, make up an interesting range of attractions that inevitably seduce travelers who visit La Hiruela and the rest of the towns and natural landscapes of Sierra del Rincón, declared a Biosphere Reserve in 2005 by UNESCO.

The fording of the Dehesa stream can cause a fun moment at certain times of the year, especially when the water level is high, after heavy rains or in the thaw season. The help of hiking poles or forest sticks may be recommended or necessary to avoid slipping and ending up in knee-deep water. In the height of summer it is likely that the channel only carries a trickle of water. In the surroundings of the stream the most impressive and unique trees appear. Before crossing the water, in a clearing on the right, herds of cows and horses tend to graze freely. At the ford of the Dehesa stream, a climb begins through an extraordinary birch forest of considerable size. The presence of birch, holly, hazelnut and other species typical of much more northern environments, conditioned by Atlantic and continental climates, places the Somosierra jungle in landscapes of the Pyrenees or the Cantabrian Mountains.

La Hiruela is not just any place, it is a unique town. A privileged enclave of the Sierra del Rincón. Its houses made of stone, adobe and oak wood from the dehesa, have hardly undergone changes in their structure since their construction, which gives La Hiruela its own architectural identity that places it as one of the best preserved towns in the Community of Madrid. .

A very well preserved dam, it is currently the oldest working dam in the entire region. The views down from the bridge across it or up the stairs from the top are amazing. It is very worth it. Just down the road is a lovely picnic spot with benches under the pine trees.

This reservoir is the oldest (still in operation) in the Community of Madrid. Construction began in 1869 and was completed in 1873, with a design that was innovative for its time. Later, a canal was created that brings water directly to the city of Madrid from this reservoir.

The Villar reservoir is one of the oldest civil hydrographic works in Madrid that is still in operation. The dam stands in the middle of one of the Lozoya river gorges, which makes it an ideal viewpoint. From here you can see one of the impressive bridges that are used by the operators of the Canal de Isabel II to inspect all the infrastructure that supplies water to Madrid.