Sunday, November 04, 2018

New Year's Resolution 10: mountain spring water in Sierra de Aracena

Over a beautiful hike in Castaño del Robledo, which actually goes around the highest peak of the Aracena mountain range (969 m), we found this pretty looking water foundation near the parking place. It had a sign saying something about "agua de manantial" and we could not really work out if it meant that the water was drinkable or not...

In any case, we filled up an empty bottle on our way out and decided to check the word in the dictionary once at home - and before drinking the water!

It turns out that Aracena, which is part of the province of Huelva, has loads of spring water fountains. For example the peak that we hiked around, a very mellow hike btw, was formed due to volcanic activities and it has been able to maintain its hight because it is some sort of material that was resistant to erosion. It seems that this is also very good for filtering water, when looking at the hiking map over the whole region, there seems to be many springs around. (more information on the rock on this website "carbonate rocks, limestones and dolomites").

On the way home, we also stopped at a small and very cutre looking village called Fuenteheridos. Later, when looking for the word "manatial" in an online dictionary (= mountain spring water), I found out that Fuenteheridos has one very famous spring in it with a funny name: Spring of 12 canons (fuente de los 12 caños). I also found out that the area had actually lots of agriculture thanks to abundant flows of water, and that they farmed  lots of potatos back in the day when it was first brought in from the Americas! 

The water from the spring in Castano del Robledo was veeery good, btw, and it made me think why do we not have better sping water bottled available in Seville....? Business idea, anyone?

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