Logbook · 2 places

The Zapardiel river

Bercial de Zapardiel, La Moraña, Ávila

1 Villages · 1 Nature

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The Zapardiel river

Nature · Bercial de Zapardiel, La Moraña, Ávila

Image of Bercial de Zapardiel, not of the place itself.

The Zapardiel is a tributary of the Duero a little over 105 kilometres long that rises at 1,183 metres of altitude in the sierra de Ávila, at the laguna de San Martín de las Cabezas, and crosses the Moraña, giving its name to half a dozen villages, among them Bercial de Zapardiel. Its modest bed traces a vega of meadows amid rain-fed cereal land, but today it is badly degraded by agricultural runoff, discharges and the overexploitation of aquifers, to the point of drying up almost completely except during the great winter floods. Cervantes recalled it in his Viaje del Parnaso as “Zapardiel, famous for its fishing”, though little remains today of that abundance.

Photo: Américo Toledano (CC BY-SA 4.0)

What to see and do in Bercial de Zapardiel