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about Vellisca
Alcarrian village with a monumental church and fossils in the surrounding area
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The church bell tolls twice. Nothing moves in the narrow lanes except a tabby cat stretching across warm stone. At 930 metres above sea level, Vellisca's altitude makes even summer mornings feel crisp, the air thin enough to carry the sound of cereal stalks brushing together half a kilometre away. This is La Alcarria conquense, a high plateau east of Cuenca where the horizon ripples rather than ends, and where a village of barely a hundred souls can still feel complete.
Stone walls the colour of burnt cream rise directly from the earth, no plinths or foundations, as if the houses have been quarried rather than built. Most date from the early 1900s, though masons reused blocks from earlier structures, so a lintel here or a threshold there carries a date from the 1700s. Timber doors are painted the same ox-blood red you will see in Serranía de Cuenca villages 40 km north; the pigment was traditionally mixed with pork fat to repel the wind-driven rain that can arrive without warning in April. Look up and you will notice most roofs carry a single tile course of darker slate—cheap, heavy, and local—then the cheaper still: handmade clay tiles fired in Brihuega, 70 km away, brought in by mule until the 1950s.
The village spreads along a ridge; every street tilts either towards the grain fields or towards the gullies that feed the Guadiela river system. There is no square in the Spanish sense, just a widening in front of the parish church where grain lorries can turn. The church itself, dedicated to Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, is a lesson in incremental Spain: a Romanesque apse swallowed by a 16th-century nave, given a neoclassical tower after a lightning strike in 1894, then stripped of its baroque altarpiece during the civil war. Inside, the temperature drops ten degrees; the stone floors are worn into shallow dishes by centuries of kneeling. Sunday mass is at eleven thirty, sung by three women and a retired shepherd from the third row. Visitors are welcome, but cameras are not.
Walk south-east for ten minutes and the houses thin out into threshing circles, stone-paved discs where wheat was once trodden by mules. Beyond them, footpaths drop into shallow barrancos where rock-cut wine cellars pepper the sandstone. Many still hold barrels; the owners live in Cuenca and return only at Christmas to top up the airlock. The paths are way-marked only by tractor ruts and the occasional cairn, yet you can piece together a five-kilometre circuit that returns to the village past an abandoned limekiln. Spring brings purple flax and white poppy; by late June the vegetation has burnt to bronze. Take water—there is no bar, no fountain, and mobile coverage vanishes once you dip below the ridge.
Birdlife rewards patience. From the upper track at dawn you can watch lesser kestrels hovering over stubble, while calandra larks rise in song flights that sound almost mechanical. Bring binoculars: the open cereal steppe is one of the few places in Castilla-La Mancha where both great and little bustard still breed, though you will need a telescope and a willingness to sit motionless for an hour to pick them out against the tawny soil. In October migrant honey-buzzards use the thermals along the ridge; locals time their mushroom forays to coincide with the first west wind, claiming the same conditions that push raptors south also bring the rains that flush the chanterelles.
Do not expect restaurants. Vellisca has one grocery that opens three mornings a week, selling tinned tuna, UHT milk and a surprising selection of local honey labelled only with the beekeeper's mobile number. If you want a meal you drive 12 km to Arcas, where Mesón de la Alcarria serves cordero al estilo de la comarca—milk-fed lamb slow-roasted in a wood oven until the rib bones project like an opened fan. Expect to pay €22 for a half ration (plenty for two) and another €14 for a plate of migas—fried breadcrumbs studded with garlic and pancetta. They pour wine from Brihuega in white ceramic porrons; if you cannot master the distance-pour, ask for a glass and no one will mind.
The only practical way in is by car. From Cuenca take the CM-210 past the windfarm at Villar de Olalla; after 32 km turn right at the ruined silk-mill onto the CU-912. The final 8 km climb through wheat and almond terraces; the road narrows to single track with passing places, so reverse etiquette applies: the vehicle heading downhill gives way. There is no petrol station after Cuenca city, so fill up. Buses used to run on market days, but the service was axed in 2019; a taxi from Cuenca will cost around €70 each way.
Accommodation is scattered across neighbouring hamlets. The closest decent beds are at Casa Rural La Laguna in Huerta de la Obispalía, 14 km north—three doubles built into a 19th-century manor, €70 a night including breakfast eggs from hens that roam the cherry orchard. Owner Marisol keeps a folder of walking routes and will lend a key to the village pool if you ask nicely. Closer to Cuenca, the parador occupies a 16th-century convent and charges €140 for a room with battlement views; book midweek and the rate drops by a third.
Come in May if you can. The plateau is still green, the air smells of resin from newly pruned pines, and threshing circles explode with crimson poppy. Temperatures sit in the low twenties, perfect for walking, and night skies remain clear enough to read by starlight—light pollution is non-existent. August brings fiestas: brass bands, portable bars, and a Saturday-night dance that ends only when the generator runs out of diesel, but daytime temperatures can top 38 °C and the paths become a dust bowl. Winter is stark, beautiful, and often cut off; if snow blocks the CU-912 you may spend an extra night whether you planned to or not.
Leave before dusk and you will meet nothing more threatening than a shepherd on a Honda mule. Stay after dark and you will understand why the plateau emptied in the 1960s: the silence is so complete it presses on the eardrums. Yet that emptiness is precisely what makes Vellisca worth the detour. There are no souvenir shops, no interpretive centres, no Instagram frames—just a high, wind-scoured settlement that has carried on doing what it has always done, indifferent to whether you came or not.
