Sierra de Aracena and Picos de Aroche

• Dehesa — open woodland of holm oak or cork oak, used as pasture. Iberian pigs feed here on acorns in winter.
• Jamón ibérico — cured ham from Iberian pigs raised on these hills, especially around Jabugo and El Repilado.
• Gruta — a show cave. Las Maravillas is the one under Aracena.

From the east the park begins as grey-green pasture. Santa Olalla de Cala has a thirteenth-century castle on the ridge. Arroyomolinos de Leon is a start for Pico Bonales, the highest point in Huelva province if you want a walk with a name. Canaveral de Leon has a small lagoon used as a summer swimming hole and a viewpoint at El Puerto.

Hinojales sits where the dehesa is still the main picture: holm oak, cork in the damper pockets, pigs under the trees. That landscape is the point of this first stretch, not another church interior.

• Santa Olalla castle — map
• Natural park — map
• Pico Bonales trailhead — map
• Lagoon at Canaveral de Leon — map

From Hinojales toward Cortegana the colour changes. Chestnut takes over from pasture. In summer it is a hard green; in autumn the hills go rust and pink. Los Marines is a chestnut village with a walk of ceramic panels for the twenty-nine towns of the sierra. Fuenteheridos is the garden stop: Villa Onuba holds a Spanish fir and a sequoia among other trees, and the valleys below grow pears and apples.

Galaroza has the Fuente de los Doce Canos, a twelve-spout spring in the street. El Repilado, on the way to Jabugo, is where the ham trade sits in plain view — drying rooms, bars that serve the thing you came to taste. Cortegana keeps a medieval castle and old water mills on a signed path.

• Villa Onuba gardens, Fuenteheridos — map
• Fuente de los Doce Canos, Galaroza — map
• El Repilado — map
• Cortegana castle — map

West again the land flattens into pasture and heath toward Aroche. Black vultures use this open ground. Aroche has a castle and Roman remains. Almonaster la Real keeps a castle with a tenth-century mosque inside it, now a hermitage — the interior to enter if you only climb one hill.

Alajar is the viewpoint. The Peña de Arias Montano holds the hermitage of Nuestra Senora de los Angeles: a rock over the chestnut valleys, and the usual end of the drive if you want a single photograph that explains the sierra. Linares de la Sierra is the next white village down the path, useful as a walk from Alajar or from Aracena, not as a separate destination.

• Aroche castle — map
• Almonaster castle and mosque — map
• Peña de Arias Montano, Alajar — map

Aracena is the practical base: rooms, the cave, a castle on the hill. The Gruta de las Maravillas is a show cave of lakes and formations, more than a kilometre of public galleries. Buy the ticket in town. The castle above gives the plan of the roofs and the first folds of the park.

• Gruta de las Maravillas — map
• Castle of Aracena — map

Santa Olalla de Cala to Aracena is the usual line, with a west loop to Cortegana or Aroche if you have the second day. The chestnut belt around Fuenteheridos and Alajar is the middle of the park.