Andy Rodker's photos with the keyword: El Fraile

This overlooks the palace monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial but there was no way of getting this interesting summit rock and the palace in the same shot, sadly!

Seen from near Paralejo (our favourite restaurant village - it has four restaurants, a tiny church with storks nests and little else!), The Machotas are outlying mountains of the Sierra de Guadarrama and good fun if you like (as I do) scrambling around among granite rocks. La Machota Chica is seen ahead.

A very hot late October day but a magnificent long walk involving ancient woodlands, terrific parkland, the palace monastery, a Roman road, a tough and steep scramble up to a craggy granitic ridge and magnificent vistas. Perfect!

Granite boulders everywhere! It was an extremely hot autumn day in 2011. The walk I did was good, if tough. It did include, though, my first sight of the palace monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

Overlooking El Escorial, Las Machotas present a nice, relatively easy hill walk. The old drystone walls are interesting too. El Fraile = The Friar. The rock at the summit seems to represent the cowled figure of a friar! Best enlarged, at Carol's (Ecobird's) suggestion.