Obon

The church bell strikes noon and nobody appears. Not a single shop door opens, no cafés spill onto the street, no mobiles ping. In Obon the only immediate reply is a pair of red-billed choughs wheeling above the slate roofs, their calls echoing off dry-stone walls like loose change dropped down a well.

A geography lesson in reverse

Obón sits at 685 m in the Cuencas Mineras, a wrinkle of low, sun-scorched mountains that slide south-east from Teruel towards the Maestrazgo. Drive the A-23 from Zaragoza, peel away at Alcañiz, and twenty-five minutes later the tarmac narrows, the verges sprout rosemary and prickly pear, and the village appears – not dramatically, more as though the hills have parted curtains for a moment and forgotten to close them again.

The settlement is linear, clinging to a shelf above the Obon ravine. Houses are built from the same limestone they stand on; roof tiles have faded to the colour of burnt toast. There is no plaza mayor in the usual Spanish sense, just a widening of lane outside the church where villagers once spread almonds to dry. The population counter now hovers around thirty-five all year, rising to perhaps a hundred when August grandchildren arrive. English is essentially non-existent; even Spanish arrives with a thick Aragonese accent that turns “cerveza” into “therbetha”.

Walking into the quarry of yesterday

The real monuments here are not carved but excavated. A ten-minute stroll north-east brings you to the first abandoned lignite mine, its entrance bricked up except for a bat-sized slot. Continue another kilometre along the pine-shaded track and the ground suddenly drops into a terraced amphitheatre: rusted wagons, a sandstone chimney, lengths of rail disappearing under thistle. Interpretation boards? None. Safety barriers? Don’t be silly. The silence is so complete you can hear your own pulse mixing with the rasp of cicadas.

Maps labelled “Cuencas Mineras” show a spider’s web of footpaths radiating from the village. Most are drivable forestry tracks in dry weather; a few shrink to single-file among holm oak and rosemary. A straightforward circuit follows the GR-24 waymarks south along the ridge to the abandoned hamlet of Los Almadenes (45 min), then drops into the ravine and returns via the old pack-animal path (another 45 min). Spring brings orchids and the smell of resin; after heavy rain the clay turns to axle-grease and you will be grateful for proper boots. Mobile reception flickers in and out – download the track before you leave the rental car.

What you will not find – and why that matters

There is no hotel, no gift shop, no Saturday craft market. The solitary bar opens when its owner, Paco, feels like it; if the metal shutter is down at 19:00, the plan is simply “mañana”. The nearest bed is in Alcañiz, 25 km away, where the Parador occupies a fortified hill and charges around €120 for rooms that look onto Templar towers. Food in Obon is whatever you have brought plus, if you are lucky, a plate of migas – fried breadcrumbs laced with garlic and grapes – at Paco’s counter. Vegetarians should pack emergency lentils; the local cuisine treats ham as a seasoning the way the British treat salt.

Evenings end early. Street lighting is feeble enough to reveal the Milky Way, but also feeble enough to trip over the village cats. Bring a head-torch and a sense of internal entertainment: a paperback, a star app, or simply the novelty of hearing nothing human after ten o’clock.

Calendar of the almost-unseen

Visit in late April and you may meet tractors parked beside almond trees whose trunks are painted white against ants. Farmers shake the branches with long bamboo poles; the ground becomes a carpet of shells that crack underfoot like brittle snow. Come back in mid-June for the fiesta of San Juan: one marquee, one brass band, one portable bar, children chasing each other around the church until 02:00. The event is aimed at returned cousins, not at tourists; if you arrive, you will be offered a plastic cup of beer and expected to join the circle of plastic chairs. Refuse politely and nobody minds; accept and you will leave with three new Facebook friends named either Jesús or Mari-Carmen.

October smells of mushrooms. Locals rise at dawn, drive to secret clearings, and reappear at lunchtime with baskets of níscalos (saffron milk-caps) that they sauté in olive oil strong enough to tint the pan. Ask too eagerly where they went and you will be met with the same smile a Devon farmer gives when asked for his cider-apple orchard.

Practical fragments (because rigid lists feel wrong here)

Fly London-Stansted to Zaragoza with Ryanair from around £45 return out of season. Hire cars wait outside the terminal; take the A-23 towards Valencia, exit at 210, then follow the N-211 and finally the TE-V-8032 into the hills. Fuel up in Alcañiz – the village has neither garage nor card-operated pump. In winter the final 8 km can ice over; carry chains or be prepared to abandon the car at the main road and walk the last hour.

Phone reception is patchy on Movistar and virtually nil on Three roaming. Download offline maps. Carry water: the public fountain works, but if the pipes freeze you will be knocking on doors with an empty bottle and GCSE Spanish. Leave nothing in the car; wild boars have learned to associate door handles with picnic hampers.

Leaving without promising the moon

Obón will not change your life. It offers no sunrise-selfie platform, no artisan gin, no flamenco troupe that materialises after dessert. What it does offer is a yardstick against which to measure the noise you normally put up with – traffic, notifications, binge-watched dramas at 2 a.m. When the church bell strikes seven the next morning and the only sound is a distant chainsaw starting up somewhere over the ridge, you may realise the place has quietly reset your inner volume control. Drive away slowly; the cats are still on the warm tarmac, and nobody is watching them but you.