Lanjarón: Cortijo Albercón Bajo

Imagine coming around a bend in a forest road, looking for an old cortijo, expecting some crumbling ruins, and seeing the above view in front of you. What a special, special day!

When I discovered the ADR fichas online in 2024, the first area for which I tried to determine locations was Lanjarón. There are 81 fichas for Lanjarón, and only about a third of them have exact locations given, so I started using every tool I could think of to precisely locate the other two-thirds. Cortijo Albercón Bajo was the first element I was able to pinpoint. I was so happy to find it on the Spanish IGN (Instituto Geográfico Nacional) maps. There were no Wikiloc tracks to the cortijo, but using the trail planning tool in the app, I was able to lay out a track that would take us from the town of Lanjarón to not only Cortijo Albercón Bajo, but also to Cortijo Albercón Alto and the Escolta mines.

Today, two years later, we actually got to walk that track. We had welcome shade almost the entire climb up and a nice wide forest road to follow (actually the GR 7, which, for a change, was easily doable). A Eurasian blackcap’s song cheered us on.

It was electrifying to come around a corner and see the cortijo for the first time. Its setting is simply magnificent, especially today with the bluest sky you could possibly wish for. The enormous pine tree that rises above the roof of the farmhouse and covers the entrance like a porch is especially striking.

The building is typical of the large farmhouses from the early 1900s which were accompanied by sizable expanses of land. The structure is still in good shape, but it doesn’t appear to be in use (although it was occupied 25 years ago when the ficha was written). The olive orchards next to the cortijo are being maintained. We could hear a tractor at work, and the farmer’s small dog came over with his tail wagging a friendly hello. There is an era behind the house where the family would have threshed their own wheat, and below which we ate our snack of mandarin oranges, admiring the view down to the Embalse de Rules and the Mediterranean. What a setting!

We next worked our way up to Cortijo Albercón Alto. It was in bad repair and not at all special. But after passing a tractor that had clearly seen better days, we had a fine view of the Escolta Mine. It may date from Roman times and was used for the extraction of iron until the 1970s.

Our route down was a copy of our walk from Nigüelas to Lanjarón on April 15, 2009. In one more day that will be 17 years ago! It was raining that day and so foggy that I am sure we never saw Cortijo Albercón Bajo as we passed by. A dog followed us from high up in the mountains all the way down to Lanjarón. We went into the information center to ask for help, and the nice woman there called a local vet who, it turned out, actually knew the dog and reunited him with his owner.Read more