Berninches

The only queue in Berninches forms behind a farmer who has paused his tractor to chat. Fifty residents, 930 metres above sea level, and not a single souvenir shop: this is rural Castilla-La Mancha stripped of the Don Quixote package tour. The village spreads across a ridge like dried clay, its stone houses the same colour as the ploughed fields below. Mobile signal flickers in and out; Google Maps still thinks the main street is a footpath.

A Map That Refuses to Fill Up

Most visitors arrive from Guadalajara, 90 km north-east along the A-2, then swing onto the CM-2011 towards Cifuentes. Six kilometres of narrow tarmac climb from the river valley to the mesa; the last bend reveals Berninches standing alone, horizon on every side. There is no bus. A taxi from Guadalajara costs around €90 and the driver will probably ask twice if you really mean this place. Fill the tank in Cifuentes: the village pump closed when the last mechanic retired.

Park by the grain silo—parking rules have never reached here—and walk. The only through-road is barely two cars wide; side alleys taper into cobbled ramps built for donkeys, not hatchbacks. Notice the temperature drop: at nearly a thousand metres, nights stay cool even in July. Bring a fleece; the terrace bars of coastal Spain feel like another country.

Stone, Clay and Silence

The Iglesia de San Pedro locks its doors unless someone has remembered to collect the key from the mayor’s cousin. When it is open, the interior smells of beeswax and dust; the bell tower served as a lookout for labourers returning across the steppe. Around it, houses follow the Alcarrian formula: wide gate for the cart, rear stable, loft for grain. Half the roofs are collapsing, their curved terracotta tiles slipping like bad teeth. A few façades have been tidied up by weekend owners from Madrid who plant geraniums, then vanish on Sunday night.

Keep walking and the village ends abruptly. One minute stone walls, next minute barley. A stone watering trough, a disused branding frame, an iron collar for oxen: museum pieces left to the weather because nobody thought them worth moving. Skylarks rise and fall over the fields; the only other sound is the wind combing the thistle heads.

Paths That Expect You to Know Where You’re Going

Berninches is less a destination than a launch pad for the paramera, the dry high plateau that stretches south towards Cuenca. Farm tracks head off towards other near-empty hamlets—Mochales, Anchuelo, Valhermoso—marked only by the occasional concrete post. There are no way-markers, no mileage boards, just ruts left by tractors and the confidence that every track eventually hits a road. Download the IGN 1:50,000 map before you set out; phone reception dies in the first ravine.

Spring brings the best walking: green wheat, almond blossom, wild tulips between the rocks. Summer is furnace-hot by eleven; set off at dawn or wait until the sun grazes the horizon and the stone walls glow orange. Autumn smells of wet earth and bruised figs; winter can trap the village under a lid of cold fog, roads glazed with black ice. Chains sometimes required—check the MeteoCastilla app rather than trusting the Mediterranean-focused national forecast.

Birdlife rewards patience. Calandra larks flit beside the path; overhead, short-toed eagles hunt snakes in the stubble. Take binoculars and water—there is no café to refuel, and farm dogs assume public footpaths are their territory. A confident “¡Buenas!” usually prevents barking escalation.

What to Eat When There’s Nowhere to Eat

Berninches has no bar, no shop, no Sunday-morning baker doing the rounds. Pack a picnic in Cifuentes: the SuperSol on the main street stocks local Manchego cured for 12 months, rough farmhouse chorizo, and corn muffins called gachas that crumble deliciously when dipped in honey. The honey itself—thick, thyme-scented—comes from an apiary you’ll pass three kilometres before the village; the beekeeper sometimes leaves jars on an honesty table by the gate, €6 in the tin.

If you stay overnight, the only accommodation is Casa Rural La Alcarria (two doubles, from €70), booked through the Cifuentes tourist office. The owners leave a bottle of their own olive oil on the kitchen table and expect you to wash up. Otherwise, sleep in Guadalajara and treat Berninches as a day trip. Either way, bring cash: contactless readers belong to another century.

Festivals Measured in Cousins, Not Crowds

The feast of San Pedro, around 29 June, used to draw shepherds down from the uplands. Today it depends on how many grandchildren can be persuaded to drive up from the capital. Some years there is a mass, a taped trumpet, and a paella cooked in a pan big enough for thirty; other years nothing happens except an extra car or two outside the church. Check the Ayuntamiento de Cifuentes Facebook page a week before—posts appear only when someone remembers the password.

August shifts activity to Cifuentes itself: open-air concerts, a livestock fair, stalls selling tostón—cold roast pork stuffed into crusty rolls. Expect queues, but nothing on the scale of Cuenca’s San Mateo or Toledo’s Virgen del Sagrario. You’ll still find a seat on the kerb to watch the procession.

The Honest Verdict

Berninches will not change your life. It offers no epiphany, no Instagram explosion, no tale to trump the bloke at the pub who swears Tarifa is still authentic. What it does offer is a slice of Spain that functions without tourism: a place where the bakery closed in 1993 and nobody has missed it yet. Come if you like wide skies, the smell of wet clay after rain, and the faint suspicion that you might be the only outsider for miles. Leave before you start resenting the tractor driver who blocks the lane—because you will, and that is the moment you know it is time to give the village its silence back.