Photos

Hola,

As the Sun started playing hide and seek, I waited for the moment when the red color of the torpgraphy become bit intenser and the blanket of clouds fill the valley behind those house located just after the red mounted hills. As soon as I saw my expectations getting fulfilled, I took this shot at the Red Valleys of Las Médulas, located in the Léon province in the Northwest of Spain. It looks like a fantasy landscape to me...

General Information on Las Médulas (Léon): Las Médulas is a multiple-landscape of an intense red colour soil, which is located in Spain's Western Province of Léon. Las Médulas is located close to Ponferrada, specifically in the direction of Ourense. Historically, Las Médulas is famous for its gold mines where the Romans started and abandoned its exploitation for gold.

In relation to altitude, the highest point of the mining area is El Mirador de Orellán at an altitude of 943 meters and in mentioning that the lowest point of the exploitation is at an altitude of around 750m, you can see that there is a big difference in height along a 1-Km cross-section. However, Channels in Las Médulas are concerned, the drainage network is scarce, with the appearance of numerous streams of little importance that practically have no effect on the mining, but that doesn’t mean that the water didn’t have an important part to play in the mining technique developed by the Romans in Las Médulas.

Geologically, Las Médulas can be defined as a landscape with presence of materials such as conglomerates, clay, marls, slate, sandstone, dolomite and limestone, emphasising inside the Quaternary formations the alluvial deposits close to the rivers and streams in the area. In relation to the materials over which the gold mining activity was carried out at Las Médulas, we can point out that practically all of them were Tertiary materials, forming a landscape of an intense red colour that contrasts with the darker tones of the Paleozoic materials that surround and where most of the supply canals of this Roman mine ran. The Tertiary materials form an immense accumulation of very erosive sediments, above all by man made erosion, where many walls with a subvertical incline appear. You can see in detail that the stratification is well marked, where the conglomerates count on a sandy clay matrix. In relation to the petrology of the rocks, the schist, quartzite and quartz principally stand out. (Above information collected from: http://www.lamiradacircular.com)

Adíos,