Leaving Astorga through the N-VI road towards Ponferrada; a few kilometres away from Ponferrada, in Villamartin, we take the N-120 road until La Barosa and here, we take the deviation to Carucedo at the foot of Las Medulas.

This is a place of strange but astonishing beauty. They are the remains of the biggest of all open-cast gold mines that the Romans exploited in the northwest of Spain. To exploit the mines, Romans used the "Ruina Montium" mining technique.

This involved constructing huge water tanks on the upper parts of the mountains from which a network of rill was excavated to run down the hillside. The water released suddenly from the tanks gushed down the rills and washed the earth down to the panning grounds at the foot of the mountain. When the alluvial stratum was very thick and the richest deposits were to be found in the lower layers, the rills were replaced by a warren of wells and galleries carved out inside the mountain itself. The sudden inrush of the water produced severe erosion and water-hammer effects that ended up by blasting out great chunks of the mountain on the other side.

The Carudedo Lake was formed by the water used in the extraction and washing of the gold.

Nowadays, Las Medulas, declared World Heritage list by UNESCO in 1998, impress by its beauty, a beauty that is the result of the man, the time and the nature.