Route Tijola – Cueva de la Paloma – Tijola la Vieja

On the route that we are going to travel, there were two mills, “El Molino de la Cerrá” of the Guiard family and “El Molino de Don Ramón”, a little further up on the right bank, also called “El Molino de Arriba” or “The Mill of Manolo the miller”
The latter was working until it was destroyed by a “flood”, which changed the course of the river, in the seventies. “El Molino de la Cerrá” was built in 1880 by the great-grandfather of the Guiard family, Guillermo Guiard Burgalat, when he settled in Tíjola from France, using the most modern techniques of the time, by letting water fall from a several meters high.

Just above the “Cerrá”, are the remains of the Castle (Hisn) where Tíjola “La Vieja” used to be, destroyed by Juan de Austria in 1570 during the revolt of the Moors. Two cisterns belonging to the Castle and the base of one of the towers can still be seen.

Description:

This tour begins next to the Hermitage of San Salvador, recognizable by its sky-blue dome. Behind the Hermitage there is a dirt road that descends towards the Bacarés river. We take this path and begin to descend but without reaching the river, since before we will see a path along which we will continue parallel to the river towards La Cerrada. Later on the path is covered with scrub and gets lost at times, but after passing some Holm oaks we will have to turn off and ascend the slope to climb a dirt road that is about 30 meters above.

After connecting with the dirt road, we will continue until we reach the Cerrada de Tíjola area, recognizable by the very narrow high walls that exist in this part of the river. We will advance until we pass next to the ruins of a mill, and after crossing the river a couple of times, we will continue parallel to it, being careful with the bushes present on the banks of the river. We will reach a point where it will be necessary to climb about 2.5 meters and where there are 2 metal nails driven into the stone. We will carefully climb this point and then we will follow the course of the river.

Later on, we will come to a fork, where we will be able to see more of the Bacarés River, continuing along a roundtrip section of about 300 meters, or directly ascending towards the Cueva de la Paloma. Out of curiosity, we did the outward/return section with great caution, since we go through a narrow path and where there is a drop of about 4 meters but there are many brambles below. We must be careful not to fall into the brambles.

After returning to the fork, we ascended the most obvious path towards the Cueva de la Paloma, where there are several caves in the mountain and inside the caves we will see Pigeons.

After a snack in the same cave, we ascended the slope towards the parking lot that exists at the top of the hill. From here we head towards the ruins of Tíjola la Vieja. Arriving at the ruin, we begin the descent through a ravine towards the dirt road that will take us to the Hermitage of San Salvador. A short and easy tour that will allow us to learn more about the Cerrada de Tíjola.

Author of the text: Ernesto Suárez Carrillo (“La Cerrá de Tíjola: Proposal for action to recover this singular place”)

Another route

We also suggest another slightly shorter route, it is the La Cerra-Cueva de la Paloma route that fjcuadradof has documented in wikiloc.