Sierra de Elche

This pano was shot at the reservoir in Elche's Sierra mountains.

It shows a picturesque spot of a Mediterranean low mountain range located just 4 km north of Elche's city centre. This natural environment used to be much frequented by locals but it is nowadays quite forgotten.

The reservoir was built in the 17th Century to hold water from the Vinalopo basin and was mainly used for irrigation purposes. It is considered as one of the first arch-gravity dams in Europe and it is currently recognised, together with all the irrigation infrastructures around it, as an asset of cultural interest by the Valencian Government.

In the mid-nineties the floodgate broke. This emptied the reservoir which then fell into disuse for about 13 years. In 2008 it was finally repaired but this time with the intention to be used as a nature reserve.

This mountain range is full of springs, streams and pools, gullies and ravines, caves and hilly ridges, historic irrigation ditches and aqueducts and even some archaeological ruins too. All these make this sierra range a place surrounded by history and beauty, yet quite forgotten nowadays by the majority of people.

Special thanks to Pascual Martinez for walking me around and showing me some special spots. Picture suggestion by Sonia Zamora-Amorós. Picture production by Antonio V. Garcia-Serrano.

Bibliography.

Europe / Spain

Lat: 38° 18' 31.01" N
Long: 1° 44' 11.68" W

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: High. Pinpoints the exact spot.

Canon 5D - Canon 15mm fisheye - f.13 at 1/160 +-2, ISO 125, RAW

Manfrotto tripod + Agnos rotator + reversed monopod + 360Precision Adjuste pano head (about 4 m)

Photoshop-PTGui-Photoshop