Arandilla del Arroyo

Nine people, one bar, 905 m above the meseta. The statistics sound brutal, yet the silence that greets you on the ridge above Arandilla del Arroyo is oddly magnetic. Stone walls the colour of burnt cream tilt against a wind that smells of thyme and diesel, and the only traffic jam you’ll meet is a single tractor reversing out of a barn. This is Castilla-La Mancha stripped of guide-book polish: a village that shrinks every winter and briefly re-inflates when grandchildren arrive each August to keep the fiesta alive.

The arithmetic of altitude

Height changes everything up here. At 905 m the nights stay cool even in July, and the first frost can arrive before the English half-term. Spring comes two weeks later than in Cuenca, 55 km to the north-west, and when the plateau glowers you can watch weather systems slide past like scenery on a slow-moving train. Bring a fleece at any time of year; the wind has had 900 uninterrupted metres to pick up speed and it bites.

Road CM-2106 corkscrews up from the Cuenca basin through lavender-coloured scrub and sudden limestone outcrops. Google Maps says an hour; reality is nearer ninety minutes once you’ve been stuck behind a grain lorry and negotiated the final unbarriered hairpins. Arrive after dark on your first attempt and you’ll understand why the car-rep in Madrid asked if you were “completamente seguro”. Fill the tank in Cuenca—there isn’t another pump until Teruel province.

What you see when there’s nothing to see

Forget polychrome tiled domes or baroque facades. The village’s appeal is cumulative: a set of solutions to living on an exposed ridge with no railway, no river, and precious little topsoil. Houses are built from the bedrock itself, schist and mottled granite mortared with local marl. Rooflines sag like tired hammocks, but the tiles—curved Arab-style—still shed the rain that arrives in short, theatrical bursts each spring. Peer over a crumbling lintel and you’ll spot the original stable beneath the kitchen; the family donkey was warmer than the humans and twice as useful.

The parish church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción is locked most days, but the key hangs on a nail inside the bar. Inside, a single nave, a Christ figure whose polychrome has blistered in the dry air, and a ledger recording baptisms back to 1787. The last entry, September 2022, was the bar-owner’s grand-daughter; the priest drove up from Cuenca especially.

Walk ten minutes past the last cottage and the plateau drops away into a shallow seasonal gorge. After heavy rain a chalky stream appears, attracting bee-eaters and the only mosquitoes for miles. Otherwise the landscape is pure steppe: knee-high rosemary, black juniper and the occasional Iberian hare frozen mid-leap. On weekdays you can follow the farm track west for 7 km to the abandoned hamlet of Valdecabriel, roofless but still mapped—take water, there is none.

Eating (or not) on the roof of La Mancha

The bar, Casa Cayetano, opens at 08:00 for farmers and shuts when the last customer leaves. Coffee is €1.20, a caña of local lager €1.50, but card payments carry a €10 minimum—carry cash. There is no menu; if Cayetano’s wife feels like cooking you might get a plate of migas—fried breadcrumbs with garlic and scraps of chorizo—otherwise expect crisps and humility. Nearest proper restaurant is in Buenache de la Sierra, 18 km back down the mountain: El Molino de Alcuneza does a reliable caldereta de cordero for €16 and will sell you a bottle of Alcarrian honey to take away.

Self-caterers should shop in Cuenca before the climb. The village has no bakery, no dairy, and the only cheese is whatever Cayetano has in his fridge. What you can buy, from a hatch beside the church, is village olive oil in re-used 1-litre gin bottles—uncertified, grassy, €7 a pop. Ring the hand-bell; someone’s aunt will appear.

When to come and when to stay away

April–May turns the plateau improbably green and the temperature hovers either side of 18 °C—perfect for the 11-km circular route that links Arandilla with the stone shepherd huts on the ridge of El Sabinar. September is golden, dry and mercifully empty, though nights drop to 8 °C. July and August are tolerable thanks to altitude, but the village fiesta (6–8 August) triples the population and halves the available oxygen. Book accommodation in neighbouring Villalba de la Sierra months ahead or accept that you’ll be sleeping in the car.

Winter is starkly beautiful and technically illegal for casual visitors. When snow blocks the CM-2106 the army sometimes air-drops fodder to stranded sheep; tourists are simply turned back at the roadblock. Even when the tarmac is clear the single rural cottage—Casa de los Almendros—shuts its shutters from November to March. Owner Pilar García (contact via Cuenca tourist office) will open for groups of six willing to pay a €50 off-season surcharge and bring their own firewood.

Practical residue (the bits you’ll swear you read somewhere)

Fly to Madrid, pick up a hire car with snow insurance, head east on the A-40. Two hours later, just past Cuenca, take exit 220 and start climbing. There is no bus, no taxi rank, no Uber, and phone signal dies 4 km out. Download offline maps and save the village co-ordinates: 40.431° N, 2.194° W. Petrol, pharmacy and cash machine are all back in Cuenca—once you’re on the ridge you’re on your own.

If the silence feels unnerving, walk 200 m beyond the last streetlamp, switch off your torch and listen. No traffic hum, no irrigation pump, just the soft metallic clink of a goat bell and, very far away, the echo of a tractor that probably set off when Franco was still alive. In an over-connected world the absence of signal is a luxury; just don’t expect to post about it in real time.