Driebes

The church bell strikes noon and nobody appears. Not a single villager emerges onto Calle Real, no shutters clatter open, no dogs bark. At 729 metres above sea level, Driebes keeps its own timetable—one that British visitors, accustomed to lunch queues and traffic, may find either unsettling or miraculous. This is La Alcarria at its most unfiltered: a granite-and-slate settlement where cereal fields roll like pale seas right up to the back door of the last house.

The Arithmetic of Smallness

Three hundred and forty-nine registered souls share 19 streets, two bars, one bakery that opens alternate mornings, and a parish church whose tower serves as both compass and weather station. The maths is instructive: any sustained conversation in the plaza will be overheard by at least ten per cent of the electorate. Locals cope by speaking low and slow; outsiders mistake the hush for hostility until someone offers the habitual greeting of “Buenas, pase usted” and the equation resets.

Altitude changes other sums. Summer daytime temperatures sit four to five degrees lower than Madrid, 85 km to the south-west, but the sun feels closer because the air is thinner. Burn time for a pale British complexion: eighteen minutes on a cloudless June noon. In winter the mercury can dip to –8 °C; the road from the A-2 is salted promptly, yet hire-car tyres that cope fine in a Surrey frost may still skate on the polished stone crests that pass for bends.

What You Actually See When Nothing “Major” Is on the Itinerary

Start at the top of the village where the cement turns to cobble and the gradient reaches one in six. The houses here are built from the same grey granite that pokes through the surrounding wheat; mortar the colour of weak tea holds everything together. Notice the wooden doors, each one a slightly different width—evidence of 1940s timber rationing when carpenters used whatever beams remained after the Civil War. Iron knockers are shaped like pears, the regional symbol of fertility and debt in equal measure.

The church of La Asunción looks shut; push the right-hand portal and it yields with a sigh. Inside, the temperature drops ten degrees and the smell is of wax, old paper and the ghost of incense. The altar piece is nineteenth-century neo-baroque, gilded with aluminium leaf during the 1950s when gold was prohibitively expensive. A side chapel displays a tiny Roman mosaic fragment discovered when the priest tried to install central heating in 1978; the planned radiators never arrived, so Christ and Bacchus now share floor space in unintended ecumenism.

From the square outside, three miradores give onto cereal steppe that stretches until the curve of the earth hides it. On very clear days the towers of Sigüenza cathedral appear as a grey smudge 28 km away—useful orientation if the phone battery dies. Binoculars reveal stone huts with conical roofs: old threshing circles, now roofed to store irrigation pipe. No signage explains them; the council spent the interpretation budget on new benches instead.

Walking without Way-marking

Driebes has no official tourist office, therefore no glossy walking leaflets. What it does have is a lattice of agricultural tracks that fan out towards neighbouring hamlets: Villar de Cobeta (7 km), Valdeavero (11 km), Pálmaces de Jadraque (14 km). The surfaces are compacted clay and pea gravel; after rain they cling to soles like wet biscuit. Footpath etiquette is simple—greet the farmer on the quad bike first, ask permission second, close every gate even if you found it open. Wheat and barley dominate, but look for patches of purple lucerne planted to fix nitrogen; the colour contrast photographs well when the sun is low.

Spring brings red poppies and the risk of processionary caterpillar nests in the pine windbreaks. Their hairs can irritate skin and airway; if you see white candy-floss tents on branches, give them a berth wider than a cricket pitch. Autumn smells of fennel and damp slate; mushroom hunters appear with curved knives and refuse to meet your eye. Both seasons reward with golden eagles riding thermals above the escarpment—listen for the clatter of loose roof tiles that usually accompanies their shadow, because village dogs recognise silhouettes better than most humans.

Calories and Coffee: the Limited Menu

British expectations of all-day dining die quickly. Bar El Pozo opens at 07:00 for farmers, serves coffee strong enough to etch chrome, and closes when the owner feels like it—often 14:30, occasionally 11:00 if the harvest is urgent. A tostada con tomate costs €1.80; butter is regarded as an exotic import and stored frozen. The other bar, La Parada, doubles as the bus shelter and offers two draft beers, one lager from Toledo, one red wine from Valdepeñas that tastes of iron and tempranillo. Neither establishment stocks fresh milk; the carton on the counter is UHT and older than the average GCSE student.

For lunch you need to have booked at Mesón El Labrador in nearby Sayatón, 9 km back towards the motorway. They do a €12 menú del día—garlic soup, roast lamb, house wine, dessert—served precisely 14:00-15:30. Arrive at 13:55 and you’ll wait outside; arrive at 15:25 and the ovens are already cooling. Vegetarian options exist if you regard eggs as vegetables. Coeliacs should bring their own bread; the village bakery produces one flour-dusted baguette per customer on request, but only after you’ve answered three questions about why anyone would voluntarily avoid gluten.

Beds for the Night, or the Lack of Them

Driebes itself offers no accommodation. The nearest choices cluster around the A-2 exit at Castejón de Henares: Hotel Ballestar Bar & Grill has 24 rooms, satellite television tuned mainly to Spanish game shows, and a pool open June-September. Doubles €65 including breakfast (toast, jam, more UHT). Five kilometres north, Hotel Rural Casona de Torres occupies a nineteenth-century manor with thicker walls than most Oxford colleges; rates €90-110 depending on whether you want a four-poster or merely a bed. Both places will give written directions to Driebes, though staff sometimes forget the new roundabout and send you via the old quarry track that navigation apps swear is impassable. It isn’t, but the hire-car excess may be invoked.

August Fever, Winter Freeze

Visit in mid-August and the population triples. Returning emigrants park Seat Ibiza hatchbacks along streets designed for mules, loudspeakers blast pasodobles until 03:00, and the village square hosts a temporary bar selling litres of beer for €2. The fiesta programme includes a paella for 500, a foam party that leaves the streets slippery for days, and a procession where the Virgin is carried at shoulder height through a tunnel of fireworks. It is either the only time to witness Driebes fully awake or the worst week for quiet contemplation, depending on tolerance for decibels.

January is the opposite. Mist pools in the valley like milk in a saucer, the church bell tolls for funerals more often than weddings, and the grocer opens just long enough to sell lottery tickets. Daytime highs of 6 °C feel colder because the granite stores chill and releases it slowly. Bring layers, and don’t expect central heating in any public building; villagers wear coats indoors as a point of honour.

The Honest Verdict

Driebes will never feature on a “Top Ten Spanish Hideaways” list, and the villagers would be horrified if it did. What it offers is a calibration exercise for British senses: silence measured in kilometres, darkness you can spread like butter, and a reminder that entire lives unfold without contact with chain coffee or contactless payment. Stay an afternoon and you’ll leave with calm lungs and dusty shoes. Stay a week and you may learn the difference between solitude and loneliness—an education cheaper than therapy and considerably more reliable than the bus back to Guadalajara, which arrives when it arrives, and not a minute sooner.