Salmeroncillos

The tractor appears first. It crests the ridge at 780 metres, engine labouring against the incline, pulling a trailer loaded with straw bales that sway like drunken dancers. Below, Salmeroncillos spreads across the saddle of land—seventy-odd houses, a church tower, and not much else—while the Alcarrian plateau rolls away in every direction, wheat stubble flashing gold against terracotta soil.

This is Spain stripped of postcards. No Moorish palaces, no tapas trails, no tour buses cooling their engines in the square. Just altitude, agriculture, and the kind of silence that makes a British visitor realise how thoroughly cities hum. At dawn the temperature can be six degrees cooler than Cuenca, forty kilometres north-east; by midday the thermometer leaps twenty degrees, and the air thins until the Sierra de Altomira floats on the horizon like a charcoal smudge.

Stone, Straw, and the Working Year

The village architecture tells its own story of boom and shrink. Granite doorframes dating to the 1800s survive beside 1970s brick garages; an adobe wall crumbles gently opposite a house whose owners commute to Madrid at weekends. The parish church of San Pedro—rebuilt after a fire in 1936—lacks the baroque swagger found in richer towns, but its tower still dictates the daily rhythm. When the bell strikes seven, labourers emerge with Thermos flasks; at eight the single bar opens for coffee and industrial-strength tostadas; by nine the streets empty except for the occasional hunting dog trotting purposefully somewhere.

Walk the three principal lanes and you’ll pass working barns rather than gift shops. Corrals smell of feed and livestock; ladders lean against haylofts exactly where they were left last night. One courtyard contains a 1952 Bedford lorry, licence plates long expired, now used as an improvised seed store. It is photogenic in the way that British farmyards were before health-and-safety stickers arrived—honest, slightly hazardous, utterly real.

Tracks across the Meseta

Outside the village, a lattice of unmarked caminos cuts through wheat, barley and vetch. These are farm tracks, not footpaths: no signposts, no stiles, no reassuring acorn symbols. What they do offer is space. A moderate circuit south towards Villar del Infantado covers 12 km with barely 200 m of ascent; skylarks accompany the walker instead of podcast noise. In May the verges foam with white poppies; by late June everything has been shaved to stubble and the land glows like a Turner sky.

Serious hikers can stitch together a two-day loop linking Salmeroncillos with the abandoned village of Altomira, sleeping at the basic refuge in Fuente de Contreras. Carry water: streams marked on older maps often run dry by July, and the nearest shop is back in the village—open mornings only, closed Thursday afternoons, stock limited.

What Passes for Après-Ski

Evenings revolve around the bar, which doubles as grocer, tobacconist and informal tourist office. Order a caña and you’ll be asked whether you prefer Mahou or the local craft lager brewed in Zafrilla, twenty minutes down the CM-210. Food options are limited to toasted sandwiches, plates of local cheese, or—if you phone ahead—cordero al estilo Alcarreño, lamb slow-roasted with garlic and honey until it collapses at the touch of a fork. The honey comes from beehives dotted across the municipality; buy a kilo jar for €8 and you’ll taste thyme, rosemary and the dry spice of esparto grass.

Accommodation is similarly straightforward. Three village houses have been converted into casas rurales, each sleeping four to six, prices from €70 a night. Expect stone floors, wood-burning stoves and Wi-Fi that flickers whenever the wind nudges the antenna. There is no hotel, no pool, no evening entertainment beyond the television in the bar corner showing Atleti matches. If that sounds bleak, book instead in Cuenca and drive up for the day; the road takes 45 minutes, last ten on a surface that resembles the surface of the moon after winter frost.

Seasons of Gold and Mud

Spring arrives late at this altitude. Farmers sow barley in March, praying the Cierzo wind doesn’t strip the topsoil. By mid-April green shoots appear, and the first migrant bee-eaters swoop overhead like turquoise arrows. Summer is ferocious: thermometers touch 38 °C, shade is scarce, and the aroma is of baked earth and wild thyme. Autumn brings threshing, dust and the annual fiesta patronal—usually the weekend closest to 15 August—when the population swells to perhaps 300. A brass band plays on a makeshift stage, cocidos simmer in giant cauldrons, and teenagers who grew up here but now work in Madrid catch up on village gossip until the generator cuts out at 3 a.m.

Winter is the quietest season. Daytime highs struggle above 8 °C, north-westerlies whip across the plateau, and the odd snow flurry turns the streets white for a morning. Chains can be necessary on the approach road; without them you may spend the night listening to the church bell counting the hours. On the other hand, the sky becomes an observatory—light pollution registers zero on the Bortle scale—and the bar serves cocido madrileño thick enough to stand a spoon in.

Getting There, Getting Out

Public transport is theoretical. A weekday bus links Cuenca with Villar del Infantado, stopping at the junction 6 km below the village. From there it’s a hot uphill slog with no pavement; arrange pickup in advance or hire a car at Cuenca rail station. Madrid is 160 km, mostly motorway; allow two hours plus whatever delay the roadworks around Tarancón throw at you. Petrol stations are scarce once you leave the A-3—fill up in Tarancón or pray the village pump still works.

Phone signal improves yearly, though Vodafone still drops to 3G inside stone houses. Download offline maps before arrival; asking directions will get you invited for a brandy, but you may never escape the kitchen table.

The Bottom Line

Salmeroncillos will not change your life. It offers no epiphany, no Instagram spike, no tale to trump friends back home. What it does give is a calibrated sense of scale: how vast the Spanish interior remains, how lightly 101 people can inhabit 60 square kilometres, how satisfying a cold beer tastes when the nearest alternative is thirty kilometres away. Come prepared for simplicity, bring curiosity rather than expectations, and the plateau will reward you with a quiet that lingers long after the tractor has disappeared over the ridge.