If taken in the sense of the clockwise from the point of start, the path enters
quickly in a pine pine pineapple pineapple pineapple with some
Pines resineros, cypresses and oaks. The first 350 meters of path run through an area
trees with abundant shadows and free of shrubs, as it constitutes the safety zone against
camping fires. This makes this section an ideal site for mushroom search in the autumn.
The path continues another 170 meters through a more intricate area of Mediterranean vegetation in the
that abounds the rosemary and the jars under the tree, which leads us to a spectacular lookout
Panoramic suspended on the old road N-IV. From the viewpoint you have an unparalleled vision
of the Natural Park, as the path is located on the South end. The panoramic view of 180
degrees allows to see the whole mountain of Despeñacos from the Collado de la Estrella, the Port of the King, he
Salto del Fraile, Navavacas, the Castle of Castro Ferral and following the line of the Collado de la
Star to the East, you can see the Paso de Despeñacolos and to its right the Collado de los
Gardens from where the park looks at Aldeaquemada.

Leaving the lookout behind, the path runs 900 meters through an old wooden draw track
completely flat through a lush mixed forest of pine, cypress, oak and cork,
where again the noble bush of the Mediterranean mountain gives a touch of naturality to the visitor
which loses the notion of distance to the people, but which, let us not forget, is just over 1 km from
distance.

Arrived at the end of the track, the path turns abruptly to the right to return to St. Helena
using a wider forest path, which also runs under a canopy of pineapple pine
Great. It is from that point where the only difficulty of the path is found, for during
400 meters is raised by a light cost with a slope about 5% to reach the
limit of the park where again it becomes completely flat. The final section runs through an area of
transition between forest and agricultural space, bordering just the southern perimeter of the campsite
Cracking dogs, passing through their access door and ending right where it started.

The path shows as main attractions its closeness to the people of St. Helena, its affability,
the abundance of shadows for hot days, the great botanical biodiversity and, above
all, the privileged views from the viewpoint that invites to let the imagination fly contemplating
this unparalleled landscape and, why not, to reflect on the countless travelers of so many cultures
who have used this natural passage between the plateau and Andalusia.

The first stretch of the path runs under the electric line that supplies Miranda del Rey, which we will leave 400 meters later to turn left, along the track that reaches the first compulsory stop place: The Cortijo of the Americas. It is seen from other times in which the population was established in the rural environment, and despite the state of deterioration in which it is found, it still retains in perfect condition its morune oven, an ethnographic element of vital importance in the past, as the population who lived away from the population cores depended on its own means of making their food, and among them the most basic: bread.

From here we will begin to descend gently by way of a sidewalk to the river La Campana, through a mixed forest with magnificent specimens of alcornoque (Quercus suber) and oak (Quercus ilex), intermingled with repopulation pine; since we are across the public mountain La Aliseda, one of those who were subjected to forced repopulation in the 1960s.

A kilometer later we will have reached the river, and we will be able to accompany it upstream or downstream thanks to the parallel road to the same that runs on the pecuary road called "Vereda del Camino Empedrado or del Puerto del Rey." If we do it down, this is, to the left, its riverside vegetation (among which we can highlight the twig, the reels and the majuelos) will delight us for a little more than a kilometre until we reach a bridge that crosses it, place of completion of the path. On the other side of the bridge is the return point of the Rio de La Campana Path, next to an excessive bearing mast that forces the photo camera to be removed. From this point, the La Aliseda Recreative Area is just 500 metres away.

If we decide to remount the La Campana River, that is, to follow the right in the fork, the delicate sound of the running of its waters and the incessant singing of the infinity of birds that inhabit its riverside will accompany us for a kilometre, until we start to separate from it by turning right to, 500 meters later, reach the pedany of Miranda del Rey. The crossroads of roads we will reach allows us to draw our visit again at free choice. If we pull right we will be able to visit the population, which emerged around a post house and then become one of the characteristic colonized villages of the time of Charles III. Although today most of his home is destined for holiday residence, old houses from that time can still be observed.

If from the crossroads of roads we decide to turn left, we will begin the Mill of the Batan path, which will allow us to visit the westernmost part of the Natural Park Despeñacolos. Finally, if we continue to face, we will begin the Empedraillo path, which will enter us in the heart of the park, approaching this historic road that is part of the so-called Royal Way.

Once we walk the first 200 meters from where we left the car, we find the bifurcation by which it is made circular, having to take the track on the left. It is from this moment on that we will enter into a darkness that will show us the best floral representation of this path: a melojar of Quercus pyrenaica, mixed with mustards (Sorbus tormentinalis) that will not leave us indifferent, especially if we make the itinerary in autumn or spring. They will accompany us for about 800 meters, mixed with magnificent copies of alcornoque (Quercus suber) and oak (Quercus ilex), until we reach a new fork that we will take back to the left. If we have been careful enough, we will have observed that, on our left, we have been able to enjoy some magnificent panorama of the Aldeaquemada core.

For 900 meters more the vegetation will become black pineapples (Pinus pinaster), accompanied by madroños (Arbutus unedo) and juniperus communis. It is easy that, so far, we have already seen some other piece of deer start his career when he has heard us, as it is a zone of love of this species. Right now we'll get to a firewall we have to go through. This forest fire defence infrastructure points to the limit between Mount El Chortal (owned by the Junta de Andalucía, for which we had been walking so far) and Mount Dehesa Navalacedra (owned by the City Council of Aldeaquemada). For 700 meters we will go through a mixed mass with pine pineer (Pinus pinea) as a more important species at first, which will then leave way for the cherries (with good examples of complaint, Quercus faginea) when we begin to accompany a small vaguada on our left.

In the end we turn into a forest track that we will take to the right, to leave it about 800 meters later taking the sidewalk that comes from the right. We just entered the public mountain El Chortal again. For about 2 kilometers we will be walking on a soloana, in the shadow of pine pines that will make us the most leading road. We can observe three stone canchals at our pace, typical of these natural spaces. Once we have reached an observation turret of fauna, our path will become a sidewalk with some slope (the most difficult part of the path) that will descend to the bottom of the valley, to go back to it.

It is the Arroyo del Tomadero, which in its first meters will delight us with a lush riverside vegetation with the aliso (Alnus glutinosa) and the strawberry (Fraxinus angustifolia) as protagonists, accompanied by a sotoscala that does so in some impenetrable points. In the middle of the way, a (non-potable) source will help us refresh in order to finish the promotion of this vaguada. A kilometer and a half upstream we will cross the Tomadero Arroyo to leave it behind, going up the path for another kilometer until we reach the main track. Taking it to the right will lead us, 400 meters later, to the fork with which we started the path. If we are attentive, we will be able to see on this final stretch, on our right, a fire surveillance turret that looks at us from above the Cerro Monuera, which we will have surrounded for just under 3 hours.

The first section runs from its beginning parallel to the Barranco de Valdeazores, sometimes crossing it and partly coinciding with the driving that supplies the gardens of Despeñacolos. The slope of this first part is soft, and will allow us to delight with a well-preserved gallery forest of mainly strawberries and alms. In spring, the peonies will give a touch of color to our march.

After a mile and a half, majestic chestnut specimens will give us a beautiful landscape in which to stop and take a breath, taking advantage to refresh us in the source of the spring that provides the driving.

After a break, we will resume the march and move on to the second stretch. This part of the path is a little more abrupt, running along the right bank of the Barranco. During this stretch, the vegetation that will accompany us will be made up of pine trees, oaks, dyes, junips, pans, jars and other species typical of the Mediterranean mountain.

Already reaching the end of the path, we will find a large number of complaints, above which, even if we do not reach the view, there is one of the best preserved melojars of the Natural Park Despeñacolos. It is not surprising that, already in the first botanical treaties, the illustrious Professor Font Quer defined this place as a "true botanical paradise."

The path made in this sense ends on the track of Las Correderas, the turning point of the Barranco de Valdeazores path, where we will have the option to go down to the road by the House of Valdeazores (to the right) or to continue on the left towards the lookout the Organs (where there are indescribable views of the Natural Monument of Los Organos); from where we will drop back to the N-IV by the Barranco de la Nimuco path.

In the opposite or descending sense, those users who come back from the lookout or who have come up through the house of Valdeazores can return to the N-IV by coming down this new path.

The first 1,000 meters of the path are of pronounced ascent, until they reach a somewhat more flat area. This is where the path continues on an existing path, which we must continue for about 500 meters until we are forced to leave it in the east direction, to reach the confluence with the Barranco de Valdeazores path. From here, and following the latter, we can reach the Collado de la Aviación Refugio, and a little later we can enjoy a spectacular view of the Natural Monument of Los Organos, in addition to being able to see, on days of good visibility, much of the province of Jaén.

It is at this point that we are offered two possibilities. On the one hand, the visitor will be able to continue his return on the Path of the Barranco de Valdeazores, or to choose to turn to the point of departure of the Path Barranco de la Niebla, but on a different path from that of ascending, which makes him a circular path.

Along our way we will have been able to enjoy one of the best representations of what is the rest of the natural park in terms of different types of vegetation. The repopulations with species of the genus Pinus interspersed with areas of Mediterranean tiles in which the ocine and the cork are the predominant species in the solanas, while in the umbria the complaint is opened. All this, accompanied by a rich forest of juniors, madroños, olive trees and a long et cetera that provide support to the populations of ungulates that have made this natural park so popular.

The path has its start and end in the popular recreational area La Aliseda (see on the map), which is accessed by the JA-7,100 road that runs between St. Helena and a point of the E-05 motorway near La Carolina. At the kilometer 4.3 of that road, a track goes down to the Campana River, which leads us to La Aliseda in just over three hundred meters. Next to the road we will have repaired in the ruins of a spa of the early 20th century that used the ferruginous waters of a spring known from ancient for its medicinal properties.

We are located in the public mountain La Aliseda, where is the La Olivilla Iberian Lince breeding center, integrated in the strategy put in place by the public administrations to recover this species in grave danger of extinction. We leave the recreational area, one of the most crowded in the province, by the stone bridge in front of the parking lot. We will see the river of the repressive Bell and chestnuts, strawberries and alms among other trees. Just out of this wooded area, some clues come out. We'll take the left one that goes parallel to the river at a certain distance from it. From it we will see the forest in a gallery that extends along the bank and, on our right, a pine of repopulation.

A few hundred meters later we arrived at a crossroads in which, on our right, the old road from La Aliseda to St. Helena converge. We continue to face, in a north direction, parallel to the river. In a few hundred more meters we reach a plain with pine trees, characterized by its large round and cedar cups, and very close to the road that access La Aliseda. If we get close to the bridge, we can see a very impressive strawberry on the same shore. Here we will make a 180-degree turn in our direction, entering the riverbank forest and returning to the recreational area in a south direction, the same as the waters of the river.

The five hundred meters back will be done by the sidewalk that goes by the river, under a lush mass of trees. The Campana River runs ten kilometres downstream in the Grande River, not far from La Carolina. This, in turn, feeds the Rumblar reservoir, in the vicinity of Baños de Encina, which was built in the forty years of last century for the creation of an important regable area.

The bank is a space that is transformed according to the seasons. The trees, benefiting from greater moisture, are of a caduca leaf, varying their volumes and colors at each moment, while the flow rates, which are the same as the Mediterranean climate. In the autumn, under the symphony of colors that create the decadent leaves, mushrooms and mushrooms proliferate on the ground and in fallen trunks. We will go through a pine tree, which will give way to a sketch of alyses, pizzas, skirmishes... until again we arrive at La Aliseda, ending the path here.

We will find traces of industrial facilities (batans or mills), of medieval origin, moved by the force of the running waters, a type of renewable energy that in the past was of the few available, and which is now revalued.

Continuing about a hundred and fifty meters along the JA-7.102 road, which has taken us to Miranda del Rey from the E-05 highway, we will find a road crossing that is where we start our path (see on the map). Here we will choose the track to the front, to the west, and we will walk without complications through a plain.

After six hundred meters we will cross the river of the Bañas, which is very close to that of the Noguera to form the Campana River. We will approach that second stream and walk on its left bank about seven hundred meters, northwest direction, until we reach the cortijo de la Noguera, which today became a school of nature. In four hundred meters we reach a hill in which there are two firewalls that serve as the limit of the Natural Park, where there is a barrier that we will have to cross while maintaining our course. The track is flanked by eucalyptus, which will later be replaced by pine trees, also of repopulation. The oak and other indigenous plants grow under these artificially introduced masses, as they are prepared to a particular reconquest. The road makes a uve to cross the stream of the Noguera, which we used to accompany, after which you reach a port with some cornoques around. From here, views are opened to the ravine of the Batan stream, to which we address, and the paths ahead of us can therefore be seen. We walk, in plural, because first we will go down the oblique slope to our right, next to the acequia of the Padilla Jump, until its derivation. The stream is covered by a riverside forest in which there are plenty of strawberries and alles that invite us to stop to enjoy its rich and ambient placid nature, from which is part a water birth with a curious anti-linear (convex folding) crowning it.

Between jaras and rosemos we will take the nine hundred meters to the crossing of the port, from where we will go back down, but now on the main road that is left, in a southwest direction. We are open to good views of the Calderon saw and the Star hill, to the north; and to the west the valley that forms the Dona Dama ravine and the Rope of the Stairs.

Our way, after crossing the waterfall again, runs in parallel to the stream, in which we can see the ruins of ancient mills, including the one that gives name to the path, the Batan Mill and another more flour built at the same time. In a little more than a kilometer of road, we will reach a sharp curve, after which we arrived at the bottom of the ravine where there is a water storage for the fire vehicles and a source, being this the end of the path.

The path begins at the Centre for the Interpretation of the Historical and Cultural Heritage of the Natural Park of Despeñacolos (see on the map), which is reached by the road A-6,200 from the E-05 motorway, towards Aldeaquemada. The center has been built on an old aprisco at the foot of the hill of the Castle. On the contrary side of this run through the historic passage of Despeñapeas the highway of the South.

However, on this side where we find the intense traffic of the fast track seems far away. The visit to the centre is certainly recommended, as it provides information on the natural and cultural heritage of the environment and also of this path. Around the center we see places of great ecological significance. On the umbria slopes, facing north, we will see forest formations with tree leaves, like the whine, and shrubs like doves or madroños. On the other hand, in the solana, the mountain is dominated by cobblestones with little sodoscala, made up of pyruetans, jars, rosemary, etc.

The path consists of two sections of about five hundred meters each, starting both from the interpretation center. One goes up to the hill of the Castle - towards the west - and the other goes down to the cave of Los Muñecos, in a southwestern direction. Although the order to travel them is indifferent, as in any case we must return to the interpretation center, we will assume that we will first take the climb to the hill. The sinuous path that we will take goes through a relatively lush encore that disappears around the 920 meters. Then, until the top of the hill, at 961 m, we will see more naked rock than vegetation.

There are in the high remains of a possible Iberian village and a lookout towards the plateau with overwhelming views, with St. Helena to the south and the port of the Muradal to the Plateau. In front, the impressive pettic structure of Mount Los Organos and, under us, the highway that follows the itinerary that with great difficulty opened at the end of the 18th century, as an alternative to the road of Las Ventes (by Los Pedroches) and other itineraries in use between the ports of Cadiz and Sevilla - doors of Américo - and the capital of the kingdom.

After walking the way to the center of interpretation, we will head towards our second destination, the cave of Los Muñecos. We will descend on a soft slope by the skirt of the hill of the Castle, and in parallel to the electric slope, towards the road we arrived for, we will cross the lower part of the same oak that we have already met up to the hill, in which we will also see alcornoques and junips of great bearing.

In two hundred and fifty meters we will reach a point very close to the road, where we will change course to surround the cut we see on our right, in which environment we can distinguish maples of Montpellier and abundant cornicabra. We must be careful with some slopes and pozas of the numerous excavations around here, as we are in a rich area of archaeological deposits, with the cave of Los Muñecos as the center of them, where the path ends.

We will have to be located in the forest house of Valdeazores, which is accessed from the A-4 motorway, only in the sense of Madrid- Cádiz, by a track that leaves to the right in the km 245.3, two hundred meters after passing the signal that indicates the entrance to Andalusia and shortly before the lookout of the Garden of Despeñacolos. We will climb three hundred meters along this track until we reach a forest house, from which parking is on the path.

We will go north, but at the very least we will be heading towards the west, which is the one that we will keep in the first half of the way to the head of the Valdeazores stream, following at first a water drive. As in much of the way, we will go up a smooth but continuous slope. We will see mixed forests around us that are the result of repopulations, in which pine trees abound in the solanas, and cypresses in the umbria. The indigenous vegetation is gaining ground with the height, also remaining in important stains on the other side of the stream - dark - that have a humid Mediterranean mountain with oaks, alcornoques, complaints, oaks, or oaks. On the riverside there are formations in a gallery of alles and strawberries, splintered with willows, tampas and tampas.

When we have already walked about two and a half miles, we reach a chestnut in which there is a spring that supplies the driving that accompanied us. It is a good place to rest and enjoy the beak of expired leaves, taking strength to continue with the rise. A kilometer later, already at the head of the stream, we will give with the track that goes down from the port of Muladar to the castle of Castro Ferral, which is located about a mile away. We can choose to approach this medieval fortress that protected the passage of La Losa, which was finally taken to the Almohades by Christian armies in the framework of the battle of the Saves of Tolosa. It is in ruins because it was later abandoned and destroyed to prevent its use by outlaws.

If we rule out the variant of the castle on the track we will only do about 50 meters, and we will leave it on a road that leaves it to the right in the direction of the Aviation Collado, as the signs indicate, completing a 180º turn that will set us to the east, walking on the crest of the right bank of the ravine. The humid Mediterranean mountain we saw from the other side is below us, which now again we are surrounded by pine trees.

We will walk two and a half miles further to crown the hill of Los Organos (natural monument), where there is the refuge of the Aviation Collado, a small air surveillance post of the Civil War, later used by pastors and fire devices. Following the path that continues in the same direction that we brought, we will cross a bosquet of pine trees, oaks, alcornoques and moans, to go out to a clear place where there is a small lookout with magnificent views of the Despeñacolos parade, which is where the path ends.