Top 5 Most Beautiful MTB Trails around El Pedernoso

The ruins of the Ermita de Santa Ana in El Toboso (Toledo) are the remains of a 16th-century Renaissance temple. It is located outside the village, on a deserted hill.

The typical houses of La Mancha in Las Pedroñeras and the surrounding region feature a very distinctive architecture, characterized by functionality and adaptation to the climate and agricultural life. Traditional materials: They were built with rammed earth (compacted mud) and adobe bricks mixed with straw. The roofs were made with poles, reeds, and plaster, and reinforced with green esparto grass ropes. White facades and indigo baseboards: The whitewash served to keep the houses cool and disinfect the walls, while the indigo blue on the baseboards and frames had both a functional and superstitious origin (to ward off insects and evil spirits).

Return to the town of Campo de Criptana

This complex is made up of four lagoons: Manjavacas, Sánchez Gómez, La Dehesilla (in Mota del Cuervo), and Alcahozo (in Pedro Muñoz). It is a key point on the migratory routes of birds between Europe and Africa, which gives it international importance.

The Manjavacas Lagoon, located in the municipality of Mota del Cuervo (Cuenca), is part of the Manjavacas Lagoon Complex, a nature reserve of great ecological and scenic value.

Views in the distance of the ruins of the Hermitage of Santa Ana, of whose past unfortunately only a few remains remain.

Public fountain on the road very close to the sanctuary of Nuestra Sra de Criptana

Unfortunately, nowadays they are often only monuments to a long tradition of craftsmanship: the heavy millstones were moved using the power of the wind alone to grind grains into flour (grain mills) or press oil from olives (oil mills). Sometimes - although rarely - the windmills also had the function of a pumping station and transported water to a higher level. But Miguel de CERVANTES (1547 to 1616) also created a literary monument to the technical monument of the mills: the most famous figure of the author, who is considered Spain's national poet and whose work can certainly be valued as world literature: "Don QUIXOTE", also known as the "Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance" and always accompanied by his loyal squire Sancho Panza, fights a - of course hopeless - battle against windmills in one of the fictional stories, in which he believes he recognizes four-armed giants.