Los Alcornocales, Andalucia, Spain
Los Alcornocales Natural Park (Parque Natural Los Alcornocales) is a natural park covering 167,767 hectares located in the the provinces of Cádiz and Málaga in Andalucia. "Los Alcornocales" means "the cork oak groves" and the Natural Park is named after its handsome and beautifully kept cork tree groves, the largest in the Iberian peninsula and one of the most important ones in the world. It is the best example of what the densely wooded, primeval Iberian forests may have been like.
Nearly all of the uninhabited land in the Natural Park is covered by Mediterranean native forest. While some of the land has been cleared for cattle ranches, much of the human activity in the park is devoted to exploitation of the forest's resources: hunting wild game, collecting wild mushrooms and foraging for good specimens of tree heath. The tree heath is a small evergreen shrub which is the source of the reddish briar-root wood used in making tobacco pipes and its wood is also an excellent raw material for making charcoal.
Above all, however, the Natural Park’s forests are exploited for the production of cork oak. Harvesting cork from a given tree can be undertaken every 10 to 12 years without damaging the tree and the cork has many commercial uses including wine-bottle stoppers, bulletin boards, coasters, insulation, sealing material for jar lids, flooring, gaskets for engines, fishing bobbers, handles for fishing rods and tennis rackets, etc.
The Natural Park is easily accessible via road between Ubrique in the north east and Alcalá de los Gazules in the west, between Algar in the north and Jimena de la Frontera in the east and between Alcalá de los Gazules to Algeciras in the south. There are also many minor roads and forest tracks criss-crossing the park.
Date: 10th September 2013
Location: view from Puerto de Galis between Jimena de la Frontera and Alcalá de los Gazules, Andalucia, Spain
Nearly all of the uninhabited land in the Natural Park is covered by Mediterranean native forest. While some of the land has been cleared for cattle ranches, much of the human activity in the park is devoted to exploitation of the forest's resources: hunting wild game, collecting wild mushrooms and foraging for good specimens of tree heath. The tree heath is a small evergreen shrub which is the source of the reddish briar-root wood used in making tobacco pipes and its wood is also an excellent raw material for making charcoal.
Above all, however, the Natural Park’s forests are exploited for the production of cork oak. Harvesting cork from a given tree can be undertaken every 10 to 12 years without damaging the tree and the cork has many commercial uses including wine-bottle stoppers, bulletin boards, coasters, insulation, sealing material for jar lids, flooring, gaskets for engines, fishing bobbers, handles for fishing rods and tennis rackets, etc.
The Natural Park is easily accessible via road between Ubrique in the north east and Alcalá de los Gazules in the west, between Algar in the north and Jimena de la Frontera in the east and between Alcalá de los Gazules to Algeciras in the south. There are also many minor roads and forest tracks criss-crossing the park.
Date: 10th September 2013
Location: view from Puerto de Galis between Jimena de la Frontera and Alcalá de los Gazules, Andalucia, Spain
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Also in: South Spain - September 2013
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