Madrid-Segovia. The scenery of the Cuenca Alta and Penalara
On the way from Madrid to Segovia, you can see the landscapes of two natural parks on the right side. South of Madrid is the Cuenca Alta del Manzanares regional Park, with forested hills and low mountains.
On the other side of the road are endless stretches of the Castilian plains, where cows and sheep graze peacefully in the spring grass. This is the best season for cattle driving, and in a couple of months it will be a scorched yellow desert.
Closer to Segovia, the spurs of the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range appeared.
The height of the mountains here is above one and a half to two thousand meters, the lower part of the slopes is covered with oak forests, at an altitude of more than a thousand meters, they are replaced by pine, then shrubs.
17 kilometers from Segovia is the top point of the massif, mount Peñalara (Peñalara), its height is 2428 meters above sea level. The upper part of the mountain is declared a natural Park.
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Spring in Central Spain is usually cold, so there is still a lot of snow on the Northern slopes of the mountains.
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At the southern edge of Segovia, we passed a large complex of red-brick buildings with tightly closed Windows. At first glance, you might think it was a prison, but it turned out to be the site of the El Acueducto sausage factory, called by locals La Choricera ("smokehouse", from la chorizo - smoked sausage). The factory was built in 1966 and is a masterpiece of industrial architecture, the authors of the project Heliodoro dolas (Heliodoro Dols) and Francisco de Inza (Francisco de Inza). A tall building with large Windows is a sausage dryer, and the design took into account the direction of the prevailing winds. The factory was closed in 2009 as a result of the economic crisis. Currently, some production at the factory is still underway and the safety of empty buildings is ensured.
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As we drove back to Madrid, the sun came out, lighting the slopes of the Penalara mountains with soft sunset colors.
