Tajo Pitch
Kilometer 50.5
At the entrance to Brea de Tajo, before reaching the La Plaza area, the route turns to the right towards the cemetery. At the exit of the town there is an intersection with the information panel for the Ruta de las Campillas and other local hiking itineraries. The road ascends through the agricultural plain to the municipal limit, where the Cañada Real Soriana Oriental appears from the Alcarria de Guadalajara. The start sign for the Natural Trail of the Cattle Canyon is not exactly at the crossroads of the livestock track, you have to turn left and climb a small slope to see the information panel and milestone 0 of the red posts.
The landscape is a suggestive horizon of agricultural hills of red and gray clay dedicated to cereal cultivation mixed with the brown forests of kermes oaks and holm oaks common in the steppe mountains of the southeast of Madrid. On the first descent, the ruins of the Chozo del Callejón appear in a tilled field on the left, among wild almond trees and aromatic plants. The old stone walls are lonely and isolated, a melancholic evocation of the old pastoral huts that filled the ditches of the great transhumant routes and were essential for the assistance and survival of the flocks during the pastoral adventure. The current road of the royal canyon is a magnificent dirt and gravel track on the original width of the livestock route, a strip of 90 Castilian varas (75 meters), which was the official width of the royal canyons.