THE MARINES

"Alto del Chorrito" GeoRoute"

Discover what may well be the oldest rocks on the Iberian Peninsula

This trail is extraordinary from an educational point of view, because within a very short distance you pass through two very different geological worlds:

  1. Carbonates  → a former shallow sea characterised by chemical precipitation and carbonate ecosystems.
  2. The Formation of La Umbría → a very ancient metamorphosed detrital series, which many authors correlate with the Negra Series, one of the oldest sedimentary records in the Iberian Massif.

This means that we have moved from a landscape formed by soluble and rigid rocks to one dominated by heavily deformed schists and quartz schists

Photo 6
Photo: Chorrito 12

GEOLOGY:

  • We will walk on ancient seas dating back more than 500 ma
  • We will examine how the Lithology shapes the present-day landscape, soil and aquifers
  • We’ll be passing through a a fascinating key geological contact, which links these rocks from different environments and geological periods
  • We’ll be venturing into a formation of very ancient rocks – possibly equivalent to the oldest on the Iberian Peninsula
  • We’ll travel back in time to discover beings who once inhabited these ancient seas
  • We shall see in the rocks bearing the marks of the passage of time: folds, foliation and structures that tell us about continental collisions and the formation of major mountain ranges during the Variscan orogeny.
  • We’ll bring it all together into one overview, that enables us to interpret the landscape, to understand how every hill, every valley and every change in vegetation is linked to the geology

FEATURES:

Meeting Point: Car park at the Marines’ entrance (opposite the quarry)

Distance: 4.2 km (there and back)

Max. altitude: 798 m / min: 602 m

Level: Low – Medium

Photo: Chorrito 7

WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO ON THIS HIKING TRAIL?

Visit the EVENTS SECTION (Filter by Geotourism) on our main website (www.holisticanature.com) in case we’re organising a trip soon

UPCOMING EVENTS

Visit the SERVICE > GEOTOURISM on our main website (www.holisticanature.com) in case you’d like to book this activity for a specific date

SERVICES