Puerto Serrano

The first thing that strikes most visitors is the sudden hush. After 36 km of freewheeling through tunnels and across viaducts, the Via Verde de la Sierra spits cyclists out at Puerto Serrano’s old railway station and the countryside simply stops talking. No click of derailleurs, no whoops from approaching tunnels—just the low hum of cicadas and the smell of hot olive leaves. The village, population 5 000 and falling, sits 168 m above sea-level on a shelf above the Guadalete river, its white houses arranged like scattered sugar cubes between pasture and sierra. It feels less like a destination than a full stop.

That feeling is mutual. Most riders remount within minutes, pedalling another 15 km to Villamartín where flats with Wi-Fi and swimming pools await. Those who stay discover a place that has never learned to hustle for tourists. The only immediate reward is cold beer at the station café, served on plastic tables that wobble on the old platform. Inside, black-and-white photos show steam trains that once hauled grain and fighting bulls through these hills. The line closed in 1960; the track bed is now the region’s most popular greenway, but Puerto Serrano still behaves like a working village that happens to have a brilliant cycle lane.

What the sierra left behind

Walk ten minutes uphill from the station and the nineteenth-century church of Santa María Magdalena blocks the sky. Its neoclassical façade is the colour of old parchment, softened further by the orange light that bounces off the surrounding walls. The plaza in front measures exactly 42 paces across; locals call it el salón and treat it like an outdoor living room. Old men play dominoes under the palms, women swap gossip from first-floor balconies, and dogs sleep in the single patch of shade cast by the bell-tower. Nothing is explained, nothing is sold. The nearest souvenir shop is 30 km away in Arcos de la Frontera, and that is how people like it.

From the upper streets the view opens west towards the reservoir of Zahara-El Gastor, a sheet of cobalt water cupped between ochre ridges. Griffon vultures ride thermals above the crags; their wingspan can top two metres, so the shadows they throw are large enough to startle. Down at river level the Guadalete has carved a thin green corridor of poplars and willows that feels almost subversive after so much sun-baked clay. A 3 km riverside path leaves from the football pitch; follow it at dusk and you’ll see egrets landing like dropped handkerchiefs on the far bank.

Eating slowly, if at all

Food is straightforward. The station café dishes out tomato-and-onion salads that taste of soil rather than supermarket refrigeration; ask for the local goat’s cheese crumbled on top and an extra splash of olive oil pressed from groves you cycled through earlier. If the place looks closed, it probably is—kitchen shuts when the last train of cyclists passes, usually around four.

Back in the village centre, Los Cazadores on Avenida Andalucía offers a €37 three-course menú del día that begins with a clay bowl of gazpacho serrano thick enough to stand a spoon in. Mains might be wild-boar stew or a simple plancha of pork served with chips that arrive scalding and slightly soft, the way the Spanish prefer them. Service is famously taciturn; compliments are met with a shrug, complaints with a stare. Tipping is neither expected nor refused. Vegetarians survive on tortilla and roasted peppers; vegans should rethink the stop-over.

Beds, buses and backup plans

Accommodation within the pueblo is limited to two small guesthouses—total rooms, fourteen. Hotel Puerta de la Sierra has the smarter beds (doubles from €55, breakfast €6) and the only swimming pool in town, though it’s more of a tiled pond shaded by a perspex roof. The cheaper Hostal Rocío is clean, central and frequently full by early afternoon during spring cycling season. If both are booked, the receptionist will happily ring Villamartín while you stand sweating in the lobby. Buses back to Cádiz or Sevia run twice daily, except Sundays when there is none. A pre-booked taxi to the railway line at Jerez costs around €80; worth knowing if easyJet schedules are tight.

Beyond the bike

Stay overnight and the village reveals quieter rhythms. At seven the church bells clang 37 times—no one seems to know why—and delivery vans squeeze past elderly women sweeping doorsteps with handmade brooms of thyme and rosemary. Swallows stitch the sky above the plaza; by eight they’re replaced by swifts. Temperatures that topped 36 °C in the tunnels drop to a tolerable 22 °C once the sun slips behind Sierra de Grazalema, 20 km west.

Morning is the time to walk the old mule tracks that loop north of town. A signed 8 km circuit climbs 250 m to the ruined watchtower of San Cristóbal; the path is stony and overgrown with purple-flowering thyme, so decent shoes beat flip-flops. From the crest the whole of northern Cádiz spreads out like a crumpled sheet of khaki paper, creased by river valleys and dotted with distant white villages. You will meet more goats than people.

When to come, when to leave

April–May and late-September to mid-October give warm days, cool nights and hedgerows full of almond blossom or wild figs. Mid-summer is fierce: 40 °C is routine, shade is rationed, and the Via Verde’s tunnels—delightfully chilly at 15 °C—become the main attraction. Winter is mild but restaurants open only at weekends; some close entirely between Christmas and Epiphany.

Puerto Serrano will never compete with its more photogenic neighbours. It lacks the hanging houses of Arcos, the craft shops of Grazalema, the castle of Olvera. What it offers instead is the rare sensation of arriving somewhere that has not rearranged itself for the visitor. Drink the cold beer, eat the goat’s cheese, watch the vultures tilt against a sky the colour of faded denim. Then, if you must, get back on the bike and roll downhill towards the coast. The sierra will still be here when the rest of Andalucía has had enough of being charming.