Villaviciosa de Córdoba

At 693 m above the olive-coated plains, Villaviciosa de Córdoba is high enough for the air to lose its August edge. Stand on the mirador by the ruined windmill at dusk and the Guadalquivir valley shimmers like tarmac in heat, while up here swifts wheel above slate roofs still warm from the afternoon sun. The village population—3,085 on paper, rather fewer in winter—fits inside one Córdoba apartment block, yet the space they occupy stretches across 240 km² of oak forest and scrub where silence collects between gunshots during boar season.

A town that forgot to modernise (mostly)

Calle Ancha, the closest thing to a high street, is twelve feet wide. Elderly men occupy the same bench outside Bar El Pilar every morning, swapping newspapers until the church clock strikes eleven and it’s time for beer and tapas. Their wives appear shortly afterwards, wheeling tartan trolleys towards the tiny Covirán supermarket where tinned octopus sits beside Yorkshire Tea imported for the half-dozen British homeowners who have traded Surrey lawns for chestnut-beamed cottages at a third of the price.

The architectural highlight is the Iglesia Parroquial de Santa Marina, a hybrid of late-Gothic bones and Renaissance dress that took two centuries to agree on its final form. Step inside and the temperature drops ten degrees; the stone floor dips where centuries of farming boots have ground down the central aisle. The tower houses six bells, the largest cast in 1793—still tolled by hand for the 8 a.m. mass, a sound that drifts across the sierra and reminds weekend visitors why they left city alarms behind.

Forests older than the houses

Villaviciosa sits inside the Sierra Morena’s dehesa, a manicured wilderness of holm and cork oak whose acorns feed the black-footed pigs that become £90-a-kilo jamón ibérico in London delis. Walking trails start at the edge of town: follow the green-and-white waymarks south-east and within thirty minutes you’re among heather and strawberry trees, boot soles crunching on last year’s mast. Griffon vultures tilt overhead; if you’re lucky (and quiet) a Spanish imperial eagle may launch from a crag, scattering partridges like thrown gravel.

The most straightforward route is the 7 km circuit to the Fuente del Rey, a spring where shepherds once watered mule trains heading for the silver mines at Almadén. Stone benches and a stone barbecue survive, though the water is now officially “no potable”—bring your own bottle. For a longer day, the GR-48 long-distance footpath crosses the municipal boundary; follow it west and you’ll reach the abandoned mining hamlet of El Guijo in three hours, roofless cottages slowly surrendering to ivy and fig trees.

Mountain-bikers use the same web of drove roads. A red-grade track climbs 400 m to the Puerto de los Santos, then drops in a rattling descent towards the Córdoba plain. Hire bikes are non-existent—bring your own and a spare inner tube; thorns from the retama bush slice sidewires for sport.

How to eat when only one bar is open

Mid-week off-season the dining roster shrinks to a lottery. Bar La Plaza does tortilla thick as a paperback and bowls of migas—fried breadcrumbs strewn with grapes and chorizo—washed down with local Cruz de Albadío wine at €1.80 a glass. If the metal shutter is down, try Mesón El Pino on the road out towards Córdoba; if that’s closed too, your supper is whatever you bought earlier in the day. The village observes the rural Spanish rule that hunger is best anticipated before 4 p.m., after which the kitchen lights go off.

Come the weekend things improve. Families drive up from the city for chestnut stews and quail grilled over vine cuttings. Game season (October–January) brings wild-boar chorizo, venison salpicón and the divisive perdiz en escabeche—partridge pickled in sharp vinegar that tastes like medieval dentistry. Vegetarians are limited to spinach-and-chickpea stews; vegans should definitely self-cater.

When the fiesta starts, bring earplugs

Santa Marina, patron saint of livestock and thunderstorms, is fêted around 17 July. The programme mixes brass-band processions with foam parties in the municipal pool and a Saturday-night dance that rattles windows until after sunrise. August fair is louder still: thirty-odd casetas erected on the football pitch, each competing for the loudest speaker stack. Book accommodation early or, better, time your escape—the village doubles in population and parking spaces disappear under folding chairs and chicken bones.

Semana Santa is more contemplative. Four pasos (two statues, two glass coffins) edge down streets barely wider than the bearers’ shoulders; trumpets echo off whitewash as the procession squeezes beneath balconies hung with hand-stitched quilts. At 2 a.m. on Good Friday the whole thing reverses up the hill in silence, only the costaleros’ grunted instructions audible—spectators stand cap in hand, a rare hush in a country that equates noise with life.

Getting there (and away again)

No train arrives and only one bus a day links Villaviciosa with Córdoba city, departing at dawn and returning before dusk—fine for locals, useless for holidaymakers. Fly to Seville or Málaga, collect a hire car and point it north on the A-4. After 90 minutes leave at junction 403, swing west on the N-432 for 25 km, then peel off onto the CO-142 for the final climb. The road twists like a discarded rope; meet a tractor round a bend and someone’s reversing 200 m downhill.

Fill the tank in Córdoba—the village garage closed years ago. Phone coverage drops in every valley, so download offline maps before you leave the ring-road. In winter the pass can frost over; carry blankets and a shovel between December and February. Summer brings the opposite problem: the Sierra Morena is tinder-dry, barbecue bans enforced with on-the-spot fines large enough to cancel the holiday budget.

Where to sleep (and what it costs)

Inside the town walls choices are slim. Hotel La Alcoholera, a converted 19th-century spirits store, offers fourteen rooms with terracotta floors from €55 a night including breakfast toast you burn yourself. El Rincón del Abuelo, three doors down, is more B&B than hotel: lace curtains, religious plaques and a roof terrace that catches the evening sun over the church tower—doubles €50, single occupancy €35.

For proper isolation, rent a cortijo in the hills. Casa Las Chorreras del Orejón, 6 km south on a forestry track, sleeps eight in thick stone walls designed for August heat and January gales. British guests rave about the milky way viewed from the pool—no light pollution, no neighbours, only the occasional grunt of grazing boar. Prices hover round €140 a night for the whole house; bring every ingredient because the nearest shop is a twenty-minute drive and the owner’s directions include “turn right at the collapsed pig shed”.

Leave the phrasebook, bring patience

English is spoken by the young who left for Seville and returned, and by the British settlers who will corner you with property advice. Otherwise communication is hands-and-smiles Spanish. Attempt the dialect—s dropping everywhere, endings swallowed—and locals grin; persist and you’ll be offered a chair and a story about the time it snowed for a week and the Guardia Civil arrived on mules.

Check-out time on your final morning coincides with the bread van’s tooting horn. Buy a still-warm barra, add local olive oil pressed 15 km away, and eat it on the bench where the old men started their day. The church bell strikes ten; somewhere in the forest a vulture lifts off a dead oak. Then drive down the mountain, back to traffic lights and roundabouts, already adjusting watches to a noisier time zone.