Solanillos del Extremo

The morning bus from Guadalajara is already half-empty at the last scheduled stop, Sigüenza. After that it becomes a school shuttle for three teenagers and a grocery service for two pensioners. By the time it climbs the final 12 km of CM-101 and deposits you beside the stone trough in Solanillos del Extremo, population 86, the only sound is the diesel engine grinding away down the valley and the wind across cereal stubble at a height where Madrid’s summer heat is only a rumour.

At 1,099 m the air is thinner and the light sharper. Stone walls sweat lichen, wooden doors need two hands to shift, and every house still has a solana—the glassed-in southern balcony that traps winter sun and turns it into something you can sit in. The village marks the exact point where the gentle orchards of La Alcarria shrug and give up, surrendering to the bleaker parameras that roll all the way to the Sistema Ibérico. Drive east for twenty minutes and you meet a crossroads with two crumbling taverns; drive west and you are back in wheat country. Solanillos squats on the hinge, and the hinge creaks.

A Manual for Reading Stone

There is no ticket office, no interpretive centre, no brown sign. The village itself is the monument, laid out in a five-minute grid of lanes that still follow the medieval livestock drift. Limestone blocks, hand-split and colour-graded by century, record which families could afford the quarry tramway in the 1920s and who still hauled stone by mule in the 1950s. The Church of the Assumption keeps its rough-cast tower because someone ran out of money after the Civil War; inside, the wooden Christ is missing a forearm, but the velvet on the altar rail is changed every Easter by the same seamstress who hems the school curtains in Sigüenza.

Photographers usually arrive late afternoon when the façades turn butter-yellow, but the better moment is 07:30 just after the sun clears the ridge: shadows are long, chimneys start to smoke, and you can shoot a whole street without a single parked car. Look for the poyo benches carved into wall bases—old men used to sit here to watch the threshing floor—and for the iron rings set at knee height: mule tethering points, now repurposed as bike stands by the two German cyclists who appear each May.

Walking the Invisible Map

Solanillos is the last place to fill a bottle before the map goes blank. Three footpaths leave the upper edge of the village; none is way-marked to British standards, but all follow the drove-roads that once carried Merino sheep to winter pasture. The most straightforward climbs 250 m to the abandoned hamlet of Moreda—roofless houses, a still-standing stone cross, elder trees growing where kitchens were. Allow 45 minutes up, 30 down, and carry a jacket even in July: the plateau wind can drop the perceived temperature ten degrees without warning.

Further out, the 9 km loop to the ruins of Villacadima crosses a skyline so empty that the only verticals are the distant wind turbines of the Campollano ridge. Spring brings stone-curlew and the odd Dupont’s lark; after harvest the stubble glows like brushed brass and you can see the granite crest of the Sierra de Albarracín 80 km away. Mobile reception is patchy—download the IGN 1:25,000 sheet before you set out, and do not rely on Google’s dashed green line; last year it directed a family from Kent into a ravine thick with juniper.

Calories at Altitude

There is no shop, no bar, no weekend pop-up. The nearest café is 12 km back down the road in Sigüenza, so self-catering is compulsory. Farmers still keep the old rhythm—kill a pig in December, eat it until March—so if you rent one of the three village houses on Airbnb you will find a freezer drawer of chorizo labelled with the year. Local recipes are built around what keeps: migas ruleras (fried breadcrumbs with garlic and chorizo), gazpacho pastor (a thick game stew, nothing to do with Andalusian tomato soup), and torta cenceña, a rock-hard flatbread that softens when you drown it in strong red wine. Bring vegetables with you; the Tuesday market van that calls at the square stocks only onions, potatoes and tinned peaches.

Seasons That Slam Shut

Summer weekends swell the head-count to perhaps 120, mostly grandchildren from Zaragoza who bring bluetooth speakers and inflate lilos in the stone cattle trough. By 15 August, the eve of the patronal fiesta, a sound system appears on a trailer, the church bell rings until 03:00, and someone wheels a barrow of churros through the streets at dawn. Book accommodation early—there are only eleven bedrooms in the whole village—and expect to dance in the road with people who remember when the place had 400 souls and two cinemas (one barn, one projector).

Winter is the opposite story. The bus reduces to a single return trip on weekdays; snow can cut the road for two or three days at a time. Residents stack firewood in September and hibernate. If you arrive then, bring chains and a thermos: night temperatures of –8 °C are routine, and the stone houses, built for summer cool, take two days of continuous fire before the walls stop breathing damp. The pay-off is silence so complete you can hear the lambs on the next hill suckling, and night skies dark enough for the Milky Way to cast a shadow.

Getting Here, Leaving Again

From London, fly to Madrid, then take the hourly train to Guadalajara (30 min, €12). ALSA runs one daily coach to Sigüenza at 14:15; the connecting local bus reaches Solanillos at 17:28. If that timing feels Victorian, hire a car at the airport: the A-2 motorway to Guadalajara is fast, the CM-101 mountain section slower but never scary except when fog parks itself on the pass. Petrol stations close at 20:00—fill up in Sigüenza if you plan an early departure.

Accommodation options are limited. Inside the village, three stone cottages have been restored with under-floor heating and Wi-Fi that works most of the time (€70–€95 a night, two-night minimum). Five kilometres away, the Parador de Sigüenza offers cathedral views and a proper restaurant, but you lose the dawn-in-the-streets moment. Campers can pitch by the ruined mill outside the northern exit; locals tolerate it provided you pack out every tin can—the nearest bin is a 20-minute drive.

Leave on a weekday and the 07:03 bus will have the same three teenagers, now in school uniform, and the same pensioners clutching pharmacy bags. The road drops, the temperature rises, phone signal returns in a rash of pings. Behind you, Solanillos del Extremo folds itself back into the skyline, a notch of stone between wheat and wilderness, already rehearsing the next season of empty.