Serrato

The tractor appears at half ten, same as every morning. It rumbles past the single bar on the main street, towing a trailer of pruned olive branches that scratch against the whitewashed walls. In Serrato, this counts as the rush hour.

Five hundred and sixty metres above sea level, the village hangs onto a fold in the Sierra de Ronda like something forgotten in a pocket. Four streets, one church tower, 447 inhabitants. That's the inventory. The surrounding hills roll away in soft waves of green and grey, each ridge topped with its own regiment of olives. Come April, the air smells of wild thyme and orange blossom. By August, it's hot enough to fry an egg on the bonnet of a hire car, though nobody here would waste the petrol driving anywhere at midday.

San Sebastián church squats at the top of the slope, its simple bell tower visible from every approach. Inside, the walls are thick enough to swallow mobile signals along with the heat. The building dates from the eighteenth century, though you'd need a keen architectural eye to spot anything grander than solid stone and a roof that hasn't leaked yet. Step out onto the tiny plaza afterwards and you'll find the real sanctuary: a stone bench facing west, perfectly positioned for the sunset ritual that draws old men from their houses like clockwork.

Downhill, the streets grow narrower until two visitors can't pass without one flattening themselves against a wall. The houses cling to gradients that would give a mountain goat pause. Doorways open straight onto living rooms where the television competes with caged canaries. Geraniums in terracotta pots provide the only consistent splash of colour against walls that start white in winter and gradually acquire the patina of dust and diesel. Iron balconies, welded in local forges, support satellite dishes pointed towards God knows what – there's barely a bar of 4G here on a good day.

The Mathematics of Silence

Walk fifty metres beyond the last house and the village noise simply stops. No dogs, no radios, no Spanish pop drifting from open windows. Just olives, thousands of them, planted in strict formation across hills that stretch to a horizon blurred by heat haze. The footpaths, such as they are, follow the routes of old farm tracks. One leads past a ruined cortijo where storks nest in the chimney, another climbs to a ridge that offers views across three provinces. Neither appears on any tourist map; locals gesture vaguely when asked for directions. "Follow the track until you see the big tree, then turn left at the rock shaped like a pig." GPS laughs and gives up.

These walks won't trouble serious hikers. Distances are measured not in kilometres but in the time it takes to smoke a cigarette, or sing three coplas whilst walking. The terrain rolls rather than soars, more Sussex Downs than Snowdonia. Spring brings a brief explosion of poppies and wild asparagus; autumn smells of wet earth and woodsmoke from farms burning pruning. Summer walking demands an early start and a hat that actually shades your neck. Winter, sharp and clear, brings views of the Mediterranean thirty kilometres away, though you'll need a day after rainfall for the dust to settle.

What Passes for Gastronomy

The village bar opens at seven for coffee and closes when the last drinker leaves, usually well after midnight. Between times it serves as post office, gossip exchange and unofficial tourist information. The menu scribbled on a blackboard offers whatever someone's aunt cooked that morning. Migas – fried breadcrumbs with garlic and pork belly – appears most days. In winter there's gazpacho, the thick Andalusian version that eats like a meal rather than a chilled soup. Goat roasted with bay leaves emerges from the oven on Sundays; arrive after two and you'll be eating tortilla instead.

The olive oil here wins prizes that nobody advertises. Visit the cooperative on the edge of town and you can fill a five-litre container for twelve euros, pressed from fruit that was hanging on trees the previous week. The woman who runs the office keeps a stack of plastic bottles rescued from mineral water, washed and ready for travellers who forgot to bring their own. She'll accept cash only, preferably in small notes, and produces certificates of origin only if you insist. The oil tastes of green tomatoes and grass, sharp enough to make you cough in the best possible way.

Festivals for the Faithful

January brings the feast of San Sebastián, three days when the village population triples. Cousins arrive from Barcelona, grandchildren fly in from Madrid. The church procession squeezes through streets barely wider than the platform supporting the saint's statue. A brass band consisting largely of teenagers who've been practising since October launches into hymns that echo off the walls like bullets. In the plaza, volunteers serve montaditos – small rolls filled with pork cooked in mountain herbs – and pour wine from plastic jugs that never seem to empty. By midnight, the older women have taken over the dancing, their sensible shoes marking rhythms learned in childhood.

August's Virgen celebration is smaller, hotter, more intimate. The village women spend three days preparing a paella big enough to feed the entire population plus whoever wandered in from the next valley. They cook in a pan the size of a satellite dish, stirring with oars normally used for rowing reservoirs. Children run between the tables until exhaustion drops them asleep on piled-up jackets. At eleven the fireworks start, amateur rockets that shoot sideways as often as up, scattering sparks across roofs dried to tinder by months without rain.

Getting Here, Getting By

From Málaga airport, the route starts promising on the A-357 towards Campillos, then dissolves into country roads that twist through landscapes of increasing emptiness. The final twenty kilometres take forty minutes if you meet a truck coming the other way; there are passing places, but nobody's in a hurry to reverse. A small car handles the gradients better than the SUV you probably hired. Petrol stations disappear after Ardales; fill up before you leave the motorway.

Accommodation options are limited to three rural houses, booked solid during Easter and any festival involving fireworks. Two sit just outside the village, converted farms where the swimming pool overlooks olive groves and the night sky delivers more stars than most Brits have seen in decades. The third perches on the edge of the village, its terrace positioned perfectly for sunset gin and tonics. None offer breakfast; the bar opens early enough and charges two euros for coffee plus tostada with tomato and oil.

Mobile signal comes and goes like a fickle friend. Vodafone works on the upper street if you stand near the church; EE gives up entirely. The village shop stocks UHT milk, tinned tuna and not much else. Bread arrives in a white van at eleven; cheese appears on Fridays. If you need cash, the ATM in the next village charges five euros per withdrawal and sometimes runs dry by Sunday.

Come prepared, in other words. Bring good walking shoes, a hat that ties on, and expectations calibrated to the speed of olives growing. Serrato doesn't do entertainment; it does time. Spend three days here and you'll start measuring it in the calls of cuckoos rather than smartphone notifications. Whether that's holiday enough depends entirely on your tolerance for your own company, and for the sound of absolutely nothing happening, very beautifully, all day long.