Days 45-46: Orellán and Las Médulas

Disclaimer: All voyages in this blog are being taken safely in the comfort of our imaginations - based on our plans and intentions for travel in 2020. What is reality after all?

When we visited this area in (perhaps) 2002, it was almost by accident. We'd driven to Ponferrada to see Gaiteiros de Lisboa play, and arrived a day earlier than we'd anticipated. So after looking round that town, we glanced at our map and found an area called Las Médulas highlighted as of historical significance. We drove out there with no expectations – and our jaws dropped.

What was this landscape?

We walked a little and then saw a sign to a mirador, so drove up there in the drizzle for a quick look. We were a bit put off by the rain, we remember, but gave it one more chance – and were stunned and had to look further.

The mirador is still there, but now much developed from the little fenced gravel area. From it we could again see what had attracted us in 2002:

The views over the landscape, down to where we'd been shortly before (in 2002) in Las Médulas, were stunning - and even better now that it wasn't raining:

That last time we'd been here, we'd then seen a sign to a small hut on the reverse side of the viewing area. We went in and were treated to a tour – just the two of us – that explained more about what we were seeing. We donned hair net and hard hut and were led through a hole in the back of this tourist office hut into the tunnels.

It's still possible to do this same tour - same hair nets, same hard hats. But it is much more organised now, with booking necessary (which we'd done through our accommodation); and the lighting has been improved: no more hand-held flashlights and warnings (in Spanish) to avoid the vertical shafts:

So ... what it is, is a Roman gold mine. This historic gold-mining site was the most important gold mine, as well as the largest open-pit gold mine, in the entire Roman Empire. Around 900 tonnes of gold were extracted over a couple of centuries, starting in the first century AD. The Las Médulas Cultural Landscape is now listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

The method of mining was called ruina montium (wrecking of the mountains). This was a Roman mining technique described by Pliny the Elder in 77 AD. It was hydraulic mining, involving washing away the mountain with large quantities of water. The Romans built at least seven long aqueducts from the streams of the La Cabrera district (where the rainfall in the mountains is relatively high) and these channelled water that was used to wash the extensive alluvial gold deposits. Narrow tunnels were dug through the mountain; the water was stored in dams and then suddenly released in a rush. The buried gold became alluvial gold, accessible in the valleys.

Pliny wrote:

"What happens is far beyond the work of giants. The mountains are bored with corridors and galleries made by lamplight with a duration that is used to measure the shifts. For months, the miners cannot see the sunlight and many of them die inside the tunnels. This type of mine has been given the name of ruina montium. The cracks made in the entrails of the stone are so dangerous that it would be easier to find purpurine or pearls at the bottom of the sea than make scars in the rock. How dangerous we have made the Earth!"

What we can walk along are the remaining galleries:

that emerge into the areas where the mountain has been washed away:

(The platform there was new to us too - though we remember the barrier.)

You can see the marking of the tunnels in much of the remaining rock faces, revealed by the erosion:

We could look back up to the viewing platform from the final gallery:

Whew! Tough work, so we were glad to retrace our steps, emerge into the mirador, and have an ice-cream:

The village of Orellán, where we were staying, is just about a kilometre walk from the viewing platform (the Mirador de Orellán), and down hill (though we'd walked up here earlier), so we spent a little time that afternoon simply wandering around 'our' village, which was very small, and looking at the houses:

In some areas it is seems to be quite run down, but perhaps renovations are still underway:

There was a small church with a slate portico, but this was closed on the Saturday.

Dinner that night was again at the restaurant attached to our accommodation:

Las Médulas Village

The next morning, we headed round (a little drive) to the actual village of Las Médulas:

We could probably have walked there from Orellán, but driving required a slight longer loop on made roads. We must admit that much of what we learnt about the area (as outlined above), was learnt there from the interpretive centre - which certainly hadn't been here last time we visited:

This is a little museum that tells the history of the mining - and explains the landscape as the remnants of the mountain that used to be here.

The Centre exhibited a contoured map of the area and provided a detailed but simplified suggestion for walks on the dirt tracks amongst the trees and rocks:

The distances are quite reasonable, though we needed to pace ourselves. Much of the area is also well signposted - and again this was, for us, a new development:

There were more tunnels and caves to explore:

as well as vistas from the rock faces over a network of trails:

We finished one loop, and returned to the village area for some lunch at the Taberna Romana:

Was this what the Roman gold miners ate?

There are also several places to stay in the immediate area, though I think we picked the best of them in Orellán.

In the afternoon, we headed off on a longer loop towards the Mirador de Pedrices, which took us through some more little remnant tunnels: