The best walks and hikes around Brea De Tajo

The landscapes from Ambite to Mondejar are worth seeing.

The beautiful Fuente del Arca (Ark Fountain) is one of the historic springs of the Tajuña Valley. It lies along the Cordel de las Merinas, a notable drove road used during the transhumance era, and for centuries it was one of the main sources of drinking water for the town of Ambite. The basin itself is a small water garden, nestled in a pleasant setting of poplars, fig trees, willows, elms, and plants associated with springs, such as the maidenhair fern, a fern unique to the region.

The Pinar del Parque Forestal de Carabaña is a large forest of Aleppo pine on the slopes of the Huevo Rodado ravine, an essential forest lung in the Tajuña river basin and a pleasant space for walking and recreation for the inhabitants of Carabaña.

The liveliest places in Carabaña are the Plaza de Joaquín Orea, on one side of the Asunción church, and the Plaza de España, where the Town Hall is located, a beautiful neoclassical stone fountain with a circular basin, built in 1798 during the reign of Charles IV, and the Ara Romana de Carabaña, a museum dedicated to local history from Roman times, with an altar from the 3rd century BC dedicated to the god Mithras. The streets slope down towards the Fonginena ravine and the Tajuña plain, seeking the passage of the river over a bridge that they call Roman because it already existed in those times, but the current construction is from the 16th century. Towards the moor, neighbourhoods of modern houses have developed, on hillsides with disturbing names such as Valdequitapán, Mata Asnos and Calvario, where the hermitage of Santa Bárbara is located, one of the town's viewpoints and a passage for the Peña Bermeja hiking route.

Part of the old Tajuña Train station has been converted into a bar, but nothing remains of the loading docks or the rest of the facilities, except for the water tank, which stands alone on a nearby esplanade and has maintained its masonry construction and sheet metal roof quite well.

In the 16th century it was an important flour mill and fulling mill in the municipality of Orusco. A century later it was transformed into a paper factory to meet the needs of modern society at the time. Now it is a carpet factory but the original weir, the waterfall, the grove and the traditional irrigation channels used in the Tajuña plain for centuries have been preserved.

It is one of the original bridges on the Arganda Train railway line over the Tajuña River. It has three semicircular arches with the central eye of greater size and a segmental arch, built in ashlar and a stone voussoir on the edge of the arches. Further on, the greenway passes over two bridges built in the same architectural style.

The main settlement of Orusco in the Tajuña valley is linked to the community of anchorites of the Order of San Jerónimo who founded the hermitage of Villaescusa in the 13th century, then moved to Lupiana and the population grew during the Middle Ages on the slopes of the Tajuña. In the 16th century it was given the title of town and lordship, it has been a crossroads on the historic railways of the southeast of Madrid and now it is a lively and prosperous agricultural town in Las Vegas madrileñas. It is the town of fountains, they are distributed in squares, corners and strategic places to supply drinking water to the different neighborhoods. The parish church of San Juan Evangelista is from the 16th century and preserves attractive walls of brick and masonry made of Toledo masonry.