2020 kept us grounded in Madrid community more than we wanted, so once again neither La Rioja, nor Pyrinees happened in the golden autumn. What happened was Sierra de Guadarrama.
In one of my earlier posts about places around Madrid I mentioned this mountain range briefly and how we hiked a mountain in the winter. This was the time to get to know it better.
One of the early days in November we decided to go to Rascafria and see the Finnish forest. Unfortunately, the whole area was so crowded that it completely discouraged us from staying there and instead we opted for exploring less known areas. One of them them was a viaduct I spotted from the road and it became our mission to find a route there. It was a combination of driving the small countryside road and some walking that took us to the virgin beauty of the autumn.
The walk delivered a lot of joy, seeing all these colors around us was beyond what words could describe. As we spent some time searching for this route, there was less and less time remaining for the light to lit the scene. We settled at an open space I sent my drone to the air to explore the aerial views. In search of the best perspective of the bridge I saw the blues of Lozoya river breaking through and that was it.
When the sun set down, we witnessed a small light spectacle over the mountain.
That time we already knew we had to return to this place. And it took us only a week to do that.
We arrived before the sunset and witnessed it with a very dramatic sky where the mountain with a country road was in my focus zone again.
To conclude on the day we drove to Puerto de Canencia and parked by the road and prepared our interior to be our sleeping place for the next 2 nights. It was already dark and we couldn't see much of the area but I dedicated some time studying surroundings in the offline maps and discovered a waterfall within 2 km from us.
In the very early morning, while still dozing, I heard a sound of 2 cars stopping, indicating we were no longer the only ones in the area. Getting out of the car, I found there were mushroom pickers wondering around and looking for mushrooms. Besides them, we were also greeted by the fog floating through the forest and one of the first things I wanted to capture was this road curve from above.
The atmospheric weather was so fitting this autumn environment. We strolled between the trees for some time until we felt ready for the warming tea and coffee.
After the late breakfast we headed for a hike to the waterfalls. On the way we encountered a beautiful forest stream.
By this time there were already a plenty of people walking the route to the waterfall, many families enjoying their time out in the nature. My goal was to return here in the next early morning and have the place to myself. Well, ok, to the two of us :)
The afternoon we hit the road again, making a brief stop in Miraflores de La Sierra.
After contemplating the views of the village we scouted our maps for the viewpoint in Puerto de la Morcuera and that was where we headed.
To our surprise the area of Puerto de la Morcuera was submerged into dense fog with almost no visibility. We decided to continue driving along the mountain pass and ended up on the other side of the mountain closer to Rascafria. Fogginess changed to dramatic skies that is still one of the strongest experiences I've had in the mountains.
Autumn road that just couldn't get any better.
For the return we took the same road through Puerto de la Morcuera to witness the foggy scenes once again. It cleared a bit so I took my last shot of the trip
This was a perfect ending to our small autumn adventure and there were no more regrets left about not visiting La Rioja o Pyrinees, a lot of beauty was to be discovered in our nearest surroundings.
Things we had on this trip:
Warm clothes and thermic base layers
Portable toilet Porta Potti
Camping cooking utensils
Light My Fire Sporks
Outwell Manley M Espresso Maker