Gajanejos

The thermometer reads eight degrees cooler than Madrid, though you've only climbed for forty minutes. At 1,028 metres, Gajanejos sits eye-to-eye with Kinder Scout, yet the landscape spread below looks nothing like Derbyshire. This is La Alcarria's high plateau, where cereal fields blur into thorn scrub and the horizon seems stitched on with barbed wire.

Sixty-one residents remain. Their village strings along a ridge like loose change spilled from someone's pocket—low stone houses, earth-coloured streets, the occasional pickup truck that looks twenty years past its MOT. Wind shapes everything here. It rattles loose shutters, sculpts juniper into permanent bows, and carries the faint smell of sheep manure from invisible flocks. Mobile signal drops in and out; when it returns, the weather app still thinks you're in Guadalajara.

The Architecture of Survival

No architect designed Gajanejos. Generations of farmers did. Houses hug the ground, walls built from whatever the fields yielded—granite chunks, river pebbles, mud mortar the colour of strong tea. Wooden doors hang on forged iron hinges thick as a wrist. Many still have the original feeding troughs built into the entrance arch, a reminder that animals lived downstairs and people above until the 1970s electricity arrived.

The parish church anchors the sole plaza. It isn't pretty: squat tower, cement repairs, whitewash flaking like sunburn. Yet its bells ring the hours accurately, and locals pause when they do. Step inside and the temperature plummets another five degrees. A single bulb swings above the altar; votive candles cost fifty cents, honesty box nailed to the wall. Sunday mass draws twelve, fifteen if grandchildren visit. Numbers don't matter. The building's real function is geographical—it marks the spot called "centre," useful when giving directions to lost delivery drivers.

Walk the upper lane at dusk. Stone bleeds pink, then grey. Someone has parked a tractor outside their living room; someone else grows geraniums in an old olive oil tin. This is heritage stripped of sentiment. No gift shop sells tea towels. The village museum is simply the village.

Walking the Paramera

Leave by the eastern track, past the last streetlamp. Within five minutes tarmac gives way to compacted clay rutted by tractor tyres. Wheat stubble scratches your ankles; larks rise, quarrelling. The path follows a drystone wall for two kilometres before splitting: left towards an abandoned threshing floor, right towards a shallow valley where holm oaks provide the only shade for miles.

Elevation gain is minimal—this is plateau, not sierra—but the altitude makes itself felt. Breathing is easier than in Madrid's summer soup, yet UV burns faster. Bring water; there are no cafés, no fountains, no roadside stalls. A farmer on a quad bike might wave; otherwise expect silence so complete you hear your own pulse.

Spring brings colour: magenta poppies, acid-yellow broom, the improbable blue of cornflowers. By July everything turns gold, then silver after harvest. Autumn smells of wild thyme and damp earth; winter arrives early, sometimes locking the village in with snowdrifts that take days to clear. The council keeps a single plough; when it breaks, residents wait.

What Actually Happens Here

Very little, and that's the draw. Mornings start late—sun rises but the streets stay empty until bakery aromas drift from kitchen windows. Someone sweeps dust from their doorway; two men load feed sacks into a van. By eleven the plaza bench fills with card players using a fifty-two-year-old pack. They keep score with sticks. Conversation meanders: rainfall totals, the price of diesel, whose daughter works in London.

August injects brief adrenaline. The fiesta patronale brings back emigrants, tents pitched in courtyards, a sound system that rattles windows until four. There's a paella vast enough to need a garden spade as serving spoon, plus fireworks that terrify every dog within ten kilometres. For three days population swells to two hundred. Then cars laden with suitcases head towards the A-2 and normal service resumes: sixty-one souls, one pensioner's bar open alternate evenings, silence by eleven.

Getting Fed, Getting Home

Gajanejos has no restaurant, no shop, no cashpoint. The nearest bread sells in Humanes, nine kilometres away—check opening times because Spanish rural hours apply: closed Monday, closed Thursday afternoon, closed if grandmother's birthday coincides. Stock up in Guadalajara before you leave. A cool box in the boot beats hoping someone will sell you a tortilla.

Accommodation means self-catering. Two village houses accept overnight guests, booked via regional tourism sites. Expect stone floors, wood-burning stoves, Wi-Fi that forgets to work. Price hovers around €70 per night for two, minimum stay two nights. Bring slippers; nights are cold even in May. The owners live in Madrid and visit monthly; keys wait in a coded box.

Driving is essential. From the UK, fly to Madrid, collect hire car, take the A-2 east for an hour, then peel off onto the CM-2000. The final twelve kilometres narrow to a single-track road where wild boar crossings outnumber oncoming vehicles. In winter carry snow chains; the council grades priorities and your Airbnb lane won't feature. Fuel up—petrol stations close at 8 p.m. and don't reopen on Sundays.

Leave early for the return. Early-migration mists can delay flights; Madrid traffic thickens unpredictably. As you descend towards the motorway, Gajanejos shrinks to a dark smudge on the ridge. The temperature gauge climbs; phone reception returns. Within forty minutes you're back in the twenty-first century, wondering if the village was real or a half-remembered episode of One Foot in the Grave. The dust on your boots says otherwise.