Walk from Vinuesa to the Casa del Parque (PRC-SO 43)

The PRC-SO 43 leaves Vinuesa and returns in a 2.9 km circuit of low difficulty, passing the Casa del Parque. It is good for stretching your legs on arrival or as an afternoon plan when the lake is in fog. Vinuesa is the park's main village, of stone manor houses, and from it the road to the lake begins.

The village

The town council calls Vinuesa the "Corte de los Pinares" (court of the pine forests): it is surrounded by one of the largest forests in the Peninsula, on the shore of the Cuerda del Pozo reservoir. It grew with the Cabaña Real de Carreteros (royal cart-drivers' guild) and the merino flocks, and that shows in its manor houses with coats of arms, balconies and large conical Pinares chimneys.

Before or after the walk, stroll round the elongated Plaza Mayor, with the town hall, the church and the seminary, and with arched doorways the size of a cart. From it rises Calle Luenga, with manor houses and palaces: the Casa de los Leones is there. The palace of the Marquises of Vilueña is a rectangular ashlar building commissioned in 1764. In the Plazuela there is a rollo (justice pillar) declared a Bien de Interés Cultural, and the washing place, from 1872, was paid for with money from villagers who emigrated to Veracruz, as its inscription recalls. The Portalejo, with its stone steps, links the upper and lower parts of the village.

The walk

The circuit is short and of low difficulty, suitable for children and for any time of year without snow. The Junta lists it as low difficulty; allow an hour at an easy pace plus the visit to the Casa del Parque, which is on the Laguna Negra road, at kilometre 3.

The Casa del Parque explains how glaciers carved the Urbión cirques and the traditional life of the district, and there they tell you the state of access to the lake. Check its hours first, because outside summer it is open few days a week and in January it is closed.

How to combine it

If you arrive at midday, this walk and the Casa del Parque fill the afternoon, and the next day you go up early to the Laguna Negra, by road or on foot by the Senda del Arroyo from the Paso de la Serrá car park. To eat in the village, see the Villa de Vinuesa restaurant; to sleep, the Villa de Vinuesa rural hotel. In summer, the Cuerda del Pozo reservoir, next to the village, rounds off the day.