Around Boadilla del Monte

La Ciudad Financiera, that's the humble name that Santander gave the village of Boadilla del Monte. And since half of Spain seems to work for the bank, there are likely some runners living in the area that would enjoy the parks surrounding the city. But even for people living in Madrid, it is a relatively short drive to Boadilla.

I will weave together a few runs I did in the last months in different parks and trails there. All of them have in common that they start the Club Deportivo Nuevo Boadilla. There is ample parking available either inside the club (the one on the SOUTH side of the road, LEFT when you come from Madrid), or, even easier, on the road itself (the M-513) are service roads with lots of parking on both sides, right after the roundabout on the map. I tried below to create a Google Map that shows the different areas I am talking about. The light yellow one, close to Aluche, is for another post. The orange part is the nicest one, and the first run will address that area.

I think the most obvious and prettiest run is within the Monte de Boadilla, the park area south of the parking. On Mapbox, the park shows up as Antiguo Estanque del Palacio Siglo XV. A good orientation point is this marker, that shows the start of the Senda del Arroyo de la Fresneda. From there, I ran along the border of the park, but took some shortcuts at the end, because I wanted to keep the run shorter. The loop should be around 10km. You'll see a huge tree that is fenced in, as well as the palace and the garden in front of it, which is pretty neat. The trail has the usual ups and downs, but is easy and fun. The area closer to the starting point can be busy, but the rest of the park was rather empty.

One part of the trail is actually asphalt, the one next to the road (in my case, I ran that part at the end of my run). Not only is the trail there well maintained, there are street lamps as well for the path on both sides of road. This comes pretty handy if you want to run after dark, which happened to me a few times when I picked up my daughter from skating class, and I had time to kill, but it was too late to run in the park itself.

As you see on the map, I added a little circle in the village itself.

The (for now) last area I like to share has the same starting point as the previous ones (the parking next to the sports place). This time, it's the area north of the M-513, which I think is called Monte de Encinar or Encinar de Boadilla. The South and East side of the park are fenced, but there are several gates you can enter and exit. I started a a few hundred meters south west of the parking, just following the road on one the previously mentioned asphalt trails. The run starts with a relatively steep climb and goes around the private sports club. After about 2.5km, the trail comes back to the main road, and you have the choice to cross through a tunnel (which brings you to the first park I described above!), or you stay on this side of yhe road and turn slightly left and head north. I decided to do the latter because I wanted to circle the entire park. The most northern tip of the run is touching a golf course, and behind the gold course is the main shopping area of Majadahonda (Decathlon and co.). Mostly downhill from there, until I made my way to the starting point, where I exited the park through the same gate I came in.