SAD HILL by bike in the footsteps of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”

The Good, the Ugly and the Bad is a film by Sergio Leone shot in 1966 with Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef, with music by Ennio Morricone. It has become a cult film, which has fueled the love of cinema among thousands of followers.

A time in which Spain became the paradise of Spaghetti Westerns, we have the idea that these films were always filmed in Almería, but the reality is that they were also often filmed in Madrid and Burgos.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly arrived in the province of Burgos in the summer of 1966, for filming they chose four locations in this province. The interiors of the Monastery of San Pedro de Arlanza are used as an improvised hospital called Mission of San Antonio. Near the town of Carazo, the Unionist fort of Betterville was built. The Arlanza River was the place chosen to give life to the battle between unionists and confederates, thus becoming the Río Grande. The final duel between the three main characters takes place in the Sad Hill Cemetery, a true icon of the film, a valley located between Silos and Contreras in the town of Santo Domingo de Silos.

In that year of 1966, the Spanish Army built the enormous cemetery with more than 5.000 graves in the Mirandilla Valley for the final scene of the film. The place was completely abandoned after filming, completely forgotten for 49 years. Vegetation covered each grave, the crosses disappeared, time stopped.

Until 2014, several people from the surrounding area (Hontoria del Pinar, Santo Domingo de Silos, Covarrubias, Contreras, Carazo, Hortigüela, Salas de los Infantes, Pinilla, etc...) came together with the intention of creating a collective that claims the value tourist and cultural places in Burgos used by Sergio Leone in the filming of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”. This is how the SAD HILL Cultural Association, during 2016 they managed to restore part of the cemetery and celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the filming of the film. They continue working along these lines and will give us a guided tour of the cemetery to tell us about the project. We are going to cycle through these scenes and discover the beauties of these Burgos territories. We will partly travel through a section of the Santander Mediterranean Greenway Natural Trail, between Tierras de Lara and the Sierra de Covarrubias, landscapes that are also part of our route along the Ruta del Cid, oak groves await us, jewels of the Visigothic and Romanesque legacy, dolmens, dinosaur footprints or the hidden La Yecla Gorge.

The chosen place to sleep is Santo Domingo de Silos, where the monastery of Benedictine monks of the same name is located, an authentic reference of the Burgos people. We will stay in the Hotel Santo Domingo de Silos.

Departure from Madrid: