Cercedilla Field Notes: Hiking

What you see above are all the walks and hikes we have done in Cercedilla.

The gif was last updated 22/04/2026 and my objective is to paint the entire town and mountains orange!

When we first thought of getting cabin in the sierra mountains near Madrid, our first thought was of Cercedilla as we had some great hikes and experiences in the red pine forests around it, and as we have begun exploring it has not disappointed! Read on for more details and our discoveries!

I am still exploring these there hills so for now I will not tip any scales one way or the other!

Hiking Gear

Binoculars

If it is just a short walk I just grab a pair of binoculars I specifically bought to always have with me in Cercedilla. These were selected after weekend long conversation with ChatGPT (it was raining all weekend). In the end the runner ups were Zeiss Victory Pocket 8x25 (around 750€) and Olympus 8x25 WP II (130€). I was using some money that was given to me at work as a recognition prize so my budget was up to 250€, but I did debate all weekend long about the Zeiss, but in the end went with the Olympus and although I have never looked through the Zeisses and if I ever get a chance could change my opinion, I am very happy with the Olympus WP IIs. They weigh in at 285g (10 oz):

They came with a small bag that can be carried on your belt (yes i really am a nerd) to ensure they are always quick at hand with no need for backpack or cargo pants:

They have a really good field of view and lots of clarity, so as previously said, I am really happy with them, and daughter number 2 is probably happy I did not spend part of her university tuition on the Zeiss Victory Pocket 8x25.

Backpack

If we are going a longer walk and I need to take water, I bought a Mochila Arpenaz 500 20L that I assume was on clearance at Decathlon because it was only 19€:

Despite its low price it is a great day pack with all sorts of nice features and is very comfortable:

Boots

I only recently got proper hiking boots and boy what a difference do they make! I call them my billy goat shoes because they grip the hill like velcro and make trecherous hills safe to walk on. They set me back 110€ at Decathlon and are Columbia Redmond VI Mid shoes that are waterproof and have OMNIGRIP (billy goat coating):

Contents of backpack

The dangerous thing about having a backpack for me is the desire to pack it full of stuff because as a youth I was a Boy Scout and still always want to be prepared…but there is point where the backpack weighs too much for the just in case secenarios. For now I have limited myself to the following:

Implementation details

How the gif at the top is done

  1. Every time we go on a walk I record the tracks with Wikiloc
  2. I then load the tracks in Google Earth Desktop
  3. I found what I thought was a good view of Cercedilla and the suronding vallies and mountains and set it as View -> Make this my start location so that it always opens to the same exact spot (40°44’51.49” N 4°02’58.24” W).
  4. When I have a new track I add it, take a screen shot in Google Earth with CTRL + ALT + C and save the file to a folder with all the other incremental screenshots
  5. I then use Ezgif to make an animated gif with these settings:
    • Delay time for all images is set to 40
    • Last image set to delay time of 400
    • Generate the Gif then resize to 50% and then click the optimize button

Thanks for reading and feel free to give feedback or comments via email (andrew@jupiterstation.net).