Besides a hall of columns, like a small mosque, really of Mozarabic execution, the hermitage is divided into a cave to the hermit, an apse, a choir and a central room with a large palm tree, a link between the divine and human. San Baudelio was a medieval monastery.

San Baudelio walls are a real graphic book. The frescoes, Mozarabic and Romanesque, many of them of oriental air, show hunting and religious scenes. Some were sold, but the murals goes on remaining as a challenge for researchers.

In the tenth century, from the capital of Almanzor, Medinaceli, until the caliphal fortress of Gormaz, along the Duero, to the west, the Moorish general built a set of watchtowers to defend the way . Some of them, like the image of La Riba de Escalote, have been consolidated.

The valleys of the Torete and Escalote rivers were natural steps to the great Moorish general Almanzor. A legend says that in 1002, after the Battle of Calatañazor, he returned sick and elderly. The legend adds he was imprisoned and died in Bordecorex, a really charming place.

Baraona stays in the way of Medinaceli. The village lived an important Inquisition process because the witches made their covens near it. The name of Baraona is derived, according to another legend, from a Varona who faced and defeated Alfonso El Batallador, King of Aragon.

The Stations of the Cross are common in the area and beautifully crafted. Such is the case in Medinaceli, Romanillos or Mezquetillas. In Romanillos there are a fountain and some remains of rhe Roman road that linked Numancia and Medinaceli, Cañada Real Soriana after Middle Age.

Livestock production has marked the appearance of Soria land, and not just for the transhumance, but because the land is good for raising cattle. The "taínas" are Celtiberian heritage and are made of masonry, with wooden beams and rye straw on the roof.

But if the "taínas" are typical, no less true for dovecotes. Always close to the villages, to prevent the thieves, but in the surrounding area to prevent frightened pigeons. There are dovecotes of all sizes and shapes. In the picture, some of Yelo.

Declared of Cultural Interest, Yelo dovecotes were built in the nineteenth century with stone and mud, on the cliffs that shelter the waters of Torote river, which fertilize crop farms above. Yelo, on the other hand, conserves a Gothic church.

Continuing south, the visitor finds a very special place. The rock formations are increasingly curious, such as housing the caves and shelters in which lies the hermitage of Santa Cruz, which overlooks the almost dried lagoon of Conquezuela.

The site has had over 4000 years of human activity, as evidenced by the rock carvings in the walls of the cave. It was medieval hermitage, at which time the anthropomorphic cliff tombs and the arch of the cave belong. The cave hides a spring.

The remains of prehistoric settlements are numerous in the area. The place that collects many of them is Ambrona. Before entering the village, you can watch the remains and the reconstruction of a burial mound. The original is 6.400 years old.

However, Ambrona is better known because it has a museum and a paleontological site, excavated in the twentieth century, in which were found fossil mammals and hunting utensils for over 250.000 years.

Close to the museum, there is a fiberglass replica of a Antiquus Elephas. Awaiting the excavations, the archeologists know more deposits near Torralba and Ambrona and several villages, 6000 and 7000 years old, near the valley of the Mansegal river.

We set the end of our walk in Medinaceli, "the City of Heaven" by Gerardo Diego. Celtiberian, Roman, Muslim capital of the "Marca Media", the "girl" of Almanzor, the ducal... This beautiful city has a little of each age, and it has the declaration of Historical-Artistic place.

From the high Medinaceli site you can see a patch of the South of Soria. Perhaps one of those mounts is the fourth "cerrillo" which hides the Almanzor tomb, or perhaps he lies in the middle of the city... The Moorish general loved Medinaceli so much that he turned it into his capital in the tenth century.

Our walk ends here. In my memories, the naturalness of the Sout, the  light that floods everything, the special atmosphere, without pollution, the silence of the land, broken only by the sounds of nature, and many other things that have been left out of these pages.