Villanueva del Rey

The bakery opens at seven, but the bread's usually ready by twenty past. That's the first thing you learn in Villanueva del Rey. The second is that the village sits 555 metres above sea level, which means summer mornings start cool enough for a walking trail before the mercury scrapes 36°C by noon. By then, the only movement is the stream murmuring beneath the main road and the occasional tractor heading out to the dehesa.

This is the northern edge of Córdoba province, where Sierra Morena rolls down to the Guadiato valley and the land smells of hot thyme and oak-wood smoke. Five hundred people live here permanently; at Easter the number doubles, in August it triples, and every visitor is noticed. English voices are still rare enough to earn a polite "Buenos días" followed by a patient wait while you remember the Spanish for "wholemeal loaf".

Streets That Remember Drovers

Start at the parish church, the tallest thing for kilometres. Its tower houses a nest of storks who clack their beaks like castanets at dusk. From here the lanes tilt up and down, paved with granite cobbles polished by centuries of hooves and tractor tyres. Houses are whitewashed yearly, wooden doors painted ox-blood red, window boxes crammed with geraniums that somehow survive the scorch. There are no souvenir shops; instead you'll pass a carpenter's workshop, a single-screen internet café run by the mayor's nephew, and Casa Manolo supermarket where two aisles hold everything from tinned chickpeas to horse feed.

Climb to the upper mirador and the view unwraps: a chessboard of olive groves, dark-green clumps of holm oak, and the ruined chimney of the old lead mine at El Terronal. On clear winter days you can pick out the slate roofs of Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo twelve kilometres away; in July the heat haze erases even the nearby hills and the world shrinks to village, valley, sky.

Walking Without Waymarkers

Maps exist but locals prefer directions like "follow the track past the abandoned threshing circle until you smell rosemary, then turn left". The signed Ruta del Arroyo de la Pizarra is easier: a nine-kilometre loop that drops from the cemetery gate to the stream, skirts pools deep enough for a discreet swim, and climbs back through cork-oak pasture. Bootprints are yours alone; the only regular company is a resident herd of fallow deer who appear at dusk like beige ghosts.

Serious walkers can link up the Cañada Real de los Pedroches, an ancient drove road still used by merino sheep. A two-day section runs north to the ruined mining village of La Granjuela—carry water, there's no bar until the end. Mobile signal vanishes after the first ridge, so download an offline map the night before; Hotel Rural Las Monteras has fibre broadband that actually works.

What Arrives on the Daily Van

Meat comes from the white van that pulls into the plaza at ten every morning except Sunday. Locals queue for soft goat's cheese, morcilla spiced with cumin, and pale pink secreto ibérico, the pig's hidden muscle that tastes like buttered ham. The bar next door will grill it for €8 a plate if you ask before the kitchen closes at four. Vegetarians survive on salmorejo, the thick tomato soup topped with diced egg and Serrano shavings; request it "sin jamón" and the waitress will look briefly worried, then produce a larger portion to compensate.

Evening eating is a movable feast between two establishments. Bar El Puerto offers plastic chairs, bullfighting posters and a television showing Real Madrid on mute. Across the street, Mesón del Valle has tablecloths and charges an extra euro for olives, but the wine list stretches to a decent Ribera. Both places close at midnight sharp; the proprietor will stack chairs around you if you linger.

Heat, Cold and the In-Between

April brings wildflowers and risk of late frost; almond blossom drifts across windscreens like snow. May is perfect: daytime 24°C, nights cool enough for a jacket, countryside still green from spring rain. June turns serious; by August even the swifts disappear and sensible humans follow the siesta rhythm—market at eight, walk at nine, indoors by eleven. September softens again, truffle-hunters appear with trained dogs, and the oak canopy flames into bronze.

Winter surprises first-time visitors. Night temperatures can dip to –3°C, pipes freeze, and the single hotel switches on heating for an extra €5 a day. What you get in return is silence so complete you hear your own pulse, and pub-level prices: a three-course lunch with wine costs €11 if you can finish the portion of migas—fried breadcrumbs with grapes and liver—that arrives after the soup.

How to Get Here, How to Leave

From Córdoba, take the N-432 west towards Badajoz. After 55 km turn left at the brown sign for Villanueva del Rey; the final 12 km climb through olive groves to the village. There is no petrol station—fill up at Las Pedrizas services on the A-4 before you exit. Trains reach nearby Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo from Córdoba and Seville, but buses to the village run twice daily, timed for doctor's appointments rather than tourists. Car hire is sensible; the road is good, twisting but wide enough for British comfort.

Leaving feels abrupt. One moment you're exchanging pleasantries with the baker, the next you're descending through pine plantations towards the motorway and the twenty-first century rushes back in. The contrast is deliberate: Villanueva del Rey doesn't do gentle transitions. It simply hands you your still-warm baguette, points you towards the oak-lined horizon, and returns to its own unhurried cadence—governed not by smartphones but by the season, the stream, and the distant clack of returning storks.