Arroyo del Ojanco

The morning bread van honks its way through Arroyo del Ojanco at eight-thirty sharp. By quarter to nine the pavement tables outside Bar Central are already filling with farmers in mud-caked boots, comparing last night's rainfall over cortados that cost €1.20. This is not a village that waits for visitors to wake up; the working day starts when the olives tell it to.

At 540 metres above sea level, the settlement sits just high enough to catch a breeze off the Sierra de Segura, but low enough for the surrounding groves to shimmer with heat haze from April onwards. Roughly 5,000 souls live here, though the census struggles to keep pace with young families who leave for Jaén and retirees who arrive from Madrid. What never changes is the arithmetic of the land: 200,000 olive trees crowd the valley, each one pruned, fertilised and harvested by hand.

The smell of new oil and old stone

The parish church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción closes for siesta, like everything else. Arrive too late and you'll find the priest locking up with the same set of keys used since 1978. Inside, the Renaissance fabric is honest rather than ornate: thick walls designed to keep July temperatures below 30 °C, a single nave that echoes with swallows rather than tour groups. The retablo was carved in Baeza workshops during the 1940s; locals still point out the carpenter who forgot to add a left shoe to Saint Joseph.

Walk east for three minutes and the tarmac turns to compacted earth. This is the beginning of the Camino de la Cruz, a circular track that threads through groves for 7 km before climbing a limestone ridge. Yellow arrows appear sporadically – when they vanish, follow the tractor ruts. Spring brings carpets of purple viper's bugloss between the trunks; autumn smells of diesel and freshly cut branches. Either season, you'll meet more dogs than people. Carry water: the only fountain is back in the plaza.

Eating what the field hands eat

Menu del día still means something here. At El Albero, the only restaurant with a working website, Thursday is gazpacho serrano day. The soup arrives thick enough to hold a spoon upright, laced with kidney beans and chunks of morcilla. A three-course lunch, bread and half a bottle of house red costs €11.50; they'll swap the wine for aquarius if you're driving. Dinner service finishes by 21:30 – the chef needs to be up for the 05:00 olive-picking shift.

Self-caterers should visit the cooperative mill on Calle San Isidro. Between November and February you can watch new oil spout into stainless-steel tanks; the rest of the year they sell last season's stock in unlabelled five-litre cans. Sierra de Segura PDO oil is noticeably softer than the peppery Tuscan styles British palates expect; drizzle it over toast with grated tomato for breakfast, or mix with local honey and drizzle over yoghurt. There is no supermarket: the Dia in neighbouring Villarrodróguez is a twelve-minute drive.

A base, not a bubble

Arroyo del Ojanco works best as somewhere you return to rather than tick off. Hire a car in Alicante – the A-31 delivers you in two and a half hours – then use the village as a cheap, quiet place to sleep while the region reveals itself. The Cazorla natural park begins thirty-five minutes north; within an hour you can be walking among ibex or kayaking the Guadalquivir's headwaters. Back at altitude, evenings cool quickly even in August, so cottages rarely need air-conditioning. Mobile signal drops to one bar on Vodafone by the petrol station; some landlords advertise "zero coverage" as a selling point.

Accommodation is split between working farmhouses and purpose-built apartments. Apartamentos La Teja has a small pool cut into the rock, English-speaking owner Gabriel, and will lend mountain bikes if you promise not to ride on the A-32. Expect to pay €70 a night for a two-bedroom flat in May, dropping to €45 by November. Cleaner Marta arrives at ten; if you want fresh towels, leave the old ones in the blue basket, not the floor – she has strong opinions about hospitality.

When the valley turns silver

January brings mist that pools like milk between the trunks. By dawn the temperature can touch –3 °C; pickers light small fires beside the trees and thaw frozen fingers around tins of sweet coffee. This is the brief season when the village feels busy: articulated lorries queue on the main road, engines running, while pneumatic rattle shakes the valley. If you visit now, ask permission before photographing crews – they work on piece rates and don't need spectators.

Summer, by contrast, is silent at midday. Shutters stay closed until the sun drops behind El Centenillo; dogs sprawl across doorways too hot to bark. The municipal pool opens at 16:00 and costs €2. Locals swim fully clothed; tourists in bikinis get stared at until they wrap a T-shirt round their waist. August fiestas feature a foam party in the polideportivo and a procession where the Virgin is carried to the olive cooperative for blessing. Beer is €1 a can, poured from cool boxes dragged behind tractors.

Leaving without the souvenir spoon

There is no gift shop. If you want something to take home, buy a five-litre can of oil and duct-tape it inside your suitcase; British customs allow up to one litre duty-free, but inspectors rarely bother with declared agricultural produce. Better still, pack a plastic tub of migas fried at El Albero – they reheat well with a splash of water and taste of woodsmoke and cumin long after you've landed back at Luton.

Arroyo del Ojanco will not change your life. It offers instead a calibrated sense of scale: how large an olive grove needs to be to support one family, how small a church can feel when you're the only visitor, how quickly the night sky darkens once the last street-light clicks off at 01:00. Drive out at dawn, windows down, and the whole valley smells of wet earth and diesel – the scent of a place that works while you are still asleep.