Valdeolivas

The 14th-century Christ stares down from the apse with the intensity of someone who's seen centuries of villagers shuffle through Sunday mass. His painted robes, faded to terracotta and dusty gold, are arguably the finest Romanesque frescoes in Castilla-La Mancha. Yet you'll likely have them to yourself. No queues, no audio guides, just the creak of heavy oak doors and the echo of your own footsteps across stone worn smooth by five hundred years of faithful feet.

Valdeolivas sits at 920 metres above sea level, high enough that the air carries a bite even in May. The village proper houses 191 souls, though weekend visitors from Madrid push the numbers closer to three hundred. It's the sort of place where the bakery closes when the bread sells out – usually by 10:30 – and where the evening passeggiata consists of three old men moving between benches in the plaza, discussing rainfall and football with equal gravity.

The Church that Time (and Tourists) Forgot

The Iglesia Parroquial dominates the single plaza like a stern grandmother. Inside, the frescoes aren't roped off or protected by glass. You can stand close enough to see individual brushstrokes, close enough to notice where medieval fingers smudged the wet plaster. The Pantocrator's eyes follow movement with that particular trick of perspective that makes two-dimensional art feel three-dimensional. Photography is permitted, though the dim interior challenges anything less than a professional setup.

Mass times are posted on a wooden board: Sundays at 11:00, weekdays at 19:00. Visitors are welcome to attend – the priest announces communion in Spanish, but the ritual needs no translation. Weekday services run twenty minutes; Sunday stretches to forty with hymns accompanied by an electronic keyboard that sounds like it's been playing since 1987.

The church tower houses two bells. The larger, named María, weighs 300 kilos and cracked in 1952. The resulting flat note carries across the paramo for miles, a sound that means different things to different people: dinner time, school time, death time. British visitors often note it sounds remarkably like the old bell at their primary school, though few can explain why this feels comforting rather than unsettling.

Walking Through Spain's Empty Quarter

The PR-CU 118 trail starts at the Huete gate, marked by a stone tablet that's already weathering after just three years. The route forms a 7.5-kilometre loop through olive groves and across the Cerro San Quilez, where the view opens across La Alcarria's rolling plains. On clear days you can see the wind turbines near Horcajo de Santiago, their blades turning like slow-motion punctuation marks against the sky.

Way-marking varies from excellent (concrete posts with yellow and white stripes) to non-existent (olive groves where farmers have removed markers to prevent walkers straying onto private land). Download the route PDF before leaving home – mobile signal dies completely within 400 metres of the village. The walk takes two hours at British walking pace, three if you stop to photograph the ruined shepherd's hut or the field where wild irises bloom purple in April.

Spring brings calandra larks, their mechanical song floating above the wheat. Autumn means short-toed eagles riding thermals above the sierra. Summer walking requires an early start; by 11:00 the temperature hits 32°C and shade becomes theoretical rather than actual. Winter walks demand layers – the altitude makes five degrees feel like minus two, especially when the wind whips across the paramo.

Eating (or Not) in Spain's Most Honest Village

Valdeolivas has no bars. None. Zero. The single grocery shop stocks tinned tuna, UHT milk, and those Spanish biscuits that taste like someone translated Rich Tea through Google Translate. For proper supplies, drive fifteen minutes to Huete's Dia supermarket before arriving. The shop closes 13:30-17:00 because siesta isn't cultural performance art here – it's survival.

Hotel Cason El Infantado serves as the village's only restaurant, though calling it a restaurant feels grand. It's more like eating in someone's exceptionally tidy dining room. Dinner requires 24 hours' notice; lunch needs booking by 10:00 the same day. The menu del dia costs €14 and runs to three courses plus wine. Expect roast lamb that falls off the bone, migas (fried breadcrumbs with grapes) that converts even carb-phobic visitors, and flan that wobbles like a nervous jelly.

Local olive oil appears in tiny bottles at the hotel reception – €8 for 500ml of liquid gold pressed from trees that witnessed Napoleon's troops retreating through these same hills. The flavour is gentle, almost buttery, nothing like the peppery Tuscan oils that make British eyes water. Buy two bottles; you'll regret only purchasing one.

When to Come, When to Stay Away

April and May transform the paramo green overnight. Wheat shoots push through red earth, creating that particular Spanish colour combination that appears in every Renaissance painting of the Madonna. Temperatures hover around 18°C – perfect walking weather, though pack a waterproof. Spring storms arrive suddenly, turning dirt tracks to chocolate mousse within minutes.

September and October deliver Spain's best light. The stone glows honey-gold at 17:00, shadows stretch long across the plaza, and the air smells of woodsmoke and drying oregano. It's also hunting season – walkers should stick to marked trails and consider wearing bright colours. The local hunting party meets at the bar in Huete (Valdeolivas still doesn't have one) before heading into the hills at dawn.

August fills with returning families. Children who've grown up speaking Madrid Spanish run wild through streets where their grandparents still measure distance in "dos cigarros" – the time it takes to smoke two cigarettes. Accommodation books solid; what feels abandoned in February feels overcrowded in August. The village fiesta (15-17 August) features a foam party in the plaza that would feel more at home in Magaluf, though the brass band playing pasodobles at 03:00 is authentically Spanish.

January and February mean proper cold. Pipes freeze. The single hotel closes for three weeks while owners visit grandchildren in Valencia. Unless you're self-catering in someone's holiday cottage (booked months ahead), don't bother. The paramo becomes a brown wasteland under low grey skies, beautiful in its own brutal way but about as welcoming as a Yorkshire moor in February.

Getting Here, Getting Away

The Madrid-Toledo high-speed line flashes past Huete station eighteen times daily, but Valdeolivas lies 15 kilometres up a road that switchbacks through hills where eagles nest. Car hire from Madrid Barajas takes 90 minutes on the A-3, then 25 minutes on the CM-210. The final approach involves a gradient that would make San Francisco blush – first gear recommended, nerves of steel essential.

No petrol station exists in Valdeolivas. The nearest pumps stand outside Huete's Lidl, where diesel costs €1.42 per litre and the machine accepts British cards without the Spanish preference for PIN-only transactions. Fill up before Sunday – everything except the church closes tighter than a Scotsman's wallet on New Year's Day.

Leaving feels like waking from a dream where Spain still measures time in church bells and olive harvests. The A-3 sweeps you back into twenty-first century velocity within minutes, but the taste of that gentle olive oil lingers, and the flat note of María's cracked bell follows you home to grey British mornings where nothing, absolutely nothing, marks the passage of time except the next train to London Bridge.