Campillo de Arenas

The first thing you notice is the smell of hot olive leaves drifting through the car window. Exit the A-44 at 74, swing past the Repsol services, and Campillo de Arenas appears halfway up a ridge, its white houses stacked like sugar cubes above a carpet of silver-green groves. Most British drivers stop only for coffee, glance at the view, then press on to Granada. Stay ten minutes longer and the village starts to work on you: the way the afternoon light turns the stone walls the colour of burnt butter, the sudden hush when a lorry engine cuts out, the fact that nobody is trying to sell you anything.

A town that keeps its back to the motorway

At 865 m above sea level, Campillo is high enough for the air to feel thin and clean. In July that means 35 °C without the suffocating humidity of the coast; in January you can wake to a dusting of snow that melts before lunchtime. The altitude also explains the architecture: steep, narrow streets designed for drainage when a storm barrels across the Sierra Mágina, roofs pitched to shrug off the occasional hailstone. Houses are modest – two storeys, wrought-iron grilles, a geranium or two – and there is none of the ornamental fretwork you see in the touristy white villages farther west. What you get instead is continuity: the same families have been pressing olives here since the 1700s, and the current harvest still dictates the tempo of daily life.

Walk upwards from the plaza and the gradient soon reminds you how little flat ground exists. Within five minutes the tarmac gives way to polished stone worn smooth by farm boots. Turn round and the view opens north across a million olive trees to the distant rooftops of Jaén, 50 km away. The motorway is hidden in a cutting; you hear only the wind and, if school has finished, the bounce of a football against a garage door.

What passes for sights – and why that is enough

The 16th-century church of La Encarnación squats at the highest point, its square tower repaired so often that the brickwork resembles a patchwork quilt. Inside, the air smells of candle wax and damp stone; the altarpiece is a gilded jungle of carved cherubs that catches the light from a single side window. There is no ticket desk, no audio guide, just a printed A4 sheet asking visitors not to use flash photography. Drop a euro in the box and the sacristan might appear from a side door to point out the Mudéjar ceiling in the sacristy – but only if he is not needed to ring the bell for vespers.

Below the church a lattice of lanes leads past communal wash-houses that still function when the mains supply falters. The most photogenic is the Fuente de la Encarnación, a stone trough fed by a copper pipe the width of a garden hose. Stand here long enough and someone will arrive with plastic jerry-cans to collect drinking water, greeting you with the polite curiosity reserved for outsiders who have clearly taken a wrong turn off the coastal trail.

Trails that start where the asphalt stops

Serious walking begins at the edge of the village. A signed path heads south-east towards the Quiebrajano reservoir, a 9 km loop that crosses abandoned terraces of almond and cherry before dropping to the water’s edge. Kingfishers patrol the reeds; the only other sound is your own boots on the gravel. For something stiffer, continue past the dam and follow the fire-track that zig-zags up to the Puerto de la Mata (1 350 m). Allow four hours return and carry more water than you think sensible – the southern slope is shade-less from eleven onwards.

If you prefer company, Tuesday is market day. One fruit lorry, one clothes rail, one cheese van staffed by a woman who will let you taste her goat’s milk queso fresco before slicing a wedge with the same knife she uses for everything else. Prices are written on torn cardboard: €2 for a kilo of misshapen tomatoes, €4 for a small wheel of cheese that tastes of thyme and barn dust. Bring cash; the village ATM is notorious for swallowing British cards.

Food that understands winter

Evenings revolve around Bar Virgen de la Cabeza, halfway down Calle Real. Order gazpacho andrajos and you receive a bowl of rabbit stew thickened with torn squares of flat-bread – stodge with attitude, ideal after a windy hike. Half portions are served without eye-rolling, useful when the alternative is falling asleep in your soup. The house red comes from Valdepeñas further north; at €1.80 a glass it costs less than the bottled water at Granada service stations. If you are still hungry, migas arrives as a mountain of fried breadcrumbs crowned with a runny egg and coins of chorizo. Share it, or you will not need breakfast.

Summer visitors sometimes complain there is nowhere to sit outside. The bar owner’s reply is pragmatic: “At nine the sun is still high enough to melt the varnish off the tables.” Instead, drink inside where the ceiling fan clacks overhead and the television mutters football results nobody asked for. By 22:30 the place empties; the last customer reverses his pick-up across the plaza and the village falls silent apart from the church clock that strikes the half-minute late.

When to come – and when to stay away

April and late-October are the sweet spots. Daytime temperatures sit in the low 20s, ideal for walking without carrying a survival kit of suncream and thermal layers. In April the Sierra Mágina is flecked with lavender and the air smells of orange-blossom drifting up from the lower groves. October brings the olive harvest: tractors dragging plastic nets clog the main street, and the co-operative mill on the bypass works through the night, its metallic thump echoing off the hills. Ask politely and they will let you watch the paste being pressed; you leave with fingers sticky from sampling oil so fresh it makes your throat catch.

August belongs to the fiestas. Brass bands march at two in the morning, fireworks ricochet between the houses, and every balcony sprouts a Spanish flag. It is fun if you embrace the rhythm of no-sleep, pointless if you came for rural tranquillity. Accommodation is limited to three small guesthouses; book Jaén hotels early or face a 40-minute mountain drive after the last concert finishes at 04:00.

Winter is crisp, often clear, occasionally snow-blocked. The road from the motorway is kept open – it is the villagers’ supply line – but the track up to the ruined castle turns into a slalom of iced tyre-ruts. Come now only if you want empty trails and the smell of wood-smoke drifting from every chimney. The bar still serves lunch, but the menu shrinks to what can be cooked on a single gas ring when the electricity trips.

Leaving without promising to return

Campillo de Arenas will not change your life. It has no boutique hotels, no Michelin aspirations, no souvenir shops flogging ceramic bulls. What it offers is a slice of interior Andalucía that has not been rearranged for the coach trade: a village where the elderly still dress in black for a year after bereavement, where the barman keeps your empty wine glass upside-down on the shelf because “you will be back tomorrow”. Drive away at dawn and the olives shimmer like pewter in the early sun; by the time you hit the motorway the scent has vanished, replaced by diesel and the impatient rush towards the Alhambra. That is fine. Some places are better as punctuation marks than as destinations.