Casa de Uceda

The First Hundred Metres

The tarmac stops shortly after the weather-beaten sign that lists the village’s population at 104. From here to the church door takes exactly ninety-three paces on cracked concrete, past stone houses the colour of dry biscuit, their wooden gates patched with sheets of corrugated iron. A terrier watches from a doorway, too hot to bark. The only shop boarded up years ago; the bar closed at lunchtime and shows no sign of reopening. Casa de Uceda doesn’t so much welcome visitors as dare them to stay longer than it takes to drink a bottle of lukewarm water.

At 900 m above the cereal plains of northern Guadalajara, the air is thinner than most British lungs expect. Nights drop to single figures even in June, and winter frosts can arrive overnight, turning the single village tap into an ornamental ice sculpture. Bring layers, and don’t trust the weather app—mountain weather here makes up its own rules.

How to Arrive Without Turning Round

Fly to Madrid-Barajas, queue for the hire-car shuttle, then head east on the A-2 for forty minutes until the sign for Guadalajara. Leave the motorway, swap tarmac for curves, and follow the CM-201 north through Humanes. The last 12 km are a narrow roller-coaster: stone walls brush the passenger-side mirror, oncoming tractors hog the centre line. Sat-nav loses nerve and suggests imaginary turnings; ignore it, stay on the CM-202, and roll down the hill into the village square. Total distance from terminal to church door: 95 km, about the same as Heathrow to Oxford, only with eagles instead of traffic cones.

There is no bus, no taxi rank, no Uber. If the car breaks down, the nearest mechanic is in Uceda, two kilometres away, and he shuts at two for lunch. Download offline maps before you leave the airport.

What Passes for a High Street

Casa de Uceda consists of three short streets, a scattering of farmyards, and one church tower whose bell still marks the hours for people who rise with the sun. The houses are built from the ground they stand on: rough granite below, adobe brick above, roofs weighted with stones against the wind. Many are empty; some have been bought by Madrileños who appear only at weekends and spend Saturday night burning logs hauled up in the boot of a 4×4. Electricity cables sag between poles, and the only streetlamp flickers like a faulty fluorescent tube. It is not neglected; it is simply calibrated to a slower metronome.

Photographers arrive hoping for golden-hour quaintness and leave disappointed: the stone absorbs light rather than reflecting it, and the façades face every direction except the one you need. Come instead for the sky show—huge, high-altitude clouds that drift eastwards all afternoon, shadows racing across wheat stubble like spilled ink. At night the Milky Way is bright enough to cast a shadow; take a tripod and a coat.

Lunch, If You Haven’t Brought Any

The village itself has no restaurant, café, or shop. Zero. The nearest place to sit down is Casa Juanes in Uceda, a five-minute drive or a twenty-minute walk along a farm track frequented by loose dogs who specialise in ambushing solitary ramblers. Casa Juanes opens at two, closes at five, and fills up with extended families who order cordero asado by the kilo. A half portion feeds two Brits comfortably; the meat is mild, more Welsh shoulder than Kentish hogget, served with roast potatoes and a jug of local Mondéjar red that costs less than a London pint. They don’t take cards—cash only, preferably exact change.

If you self-cater, stock up in Guadalajara’s Mercadona before you leave the city. The village has one public fountain with potable water; locals fill jerry cans there and pretend not to notice tourists rinsing hiking boots.

Walking Without Waymarks

There are no signed trails, no gift-shop maps, no wooden railings to keep you on message. What you get is a lattice of farm tracks that fan out towards distant threshing circles and abandoned cortijos. Pick any track and walk for twenty minutes; the village shrinks to a smudge of terracotta while the plain unrolls like an old canvas, stripes of barley stubble next to emerald vetch. Kestrels hover overhead; the occasional 4×4 raises a plume of dust and waves you out of the way.

In spring the fields are green enough to hurt your eyes; by July the colour has been baked out, leaving a palette of biscuit, straw, and rust. Take two litres of water per person—there is no shade, and the breeze is deceptively drying. Mobile signal dies within 500 m of the last house; tell someone where you are going, and when you expect to be back.

When the Village Wakes Up

For fifty weekends of the year Casa de Uceda dozes. Then August arrives, returnees from Madrid, Barcelona, even Birmingham, inflate the population five-fold. The church square fills with folding tables, paper lanterns, and a sound system that could service Glastonbury. Friday night is the verbena: elderly couples dance pasodobles while teenagers stream TikToks on miraculously restored 4G. Saturday brings a communal paella cooked in a pan the size of a satellite dish; you pay €7 for a paper plate and a plastic fork, and nobody checks whether you are local. By Sunday lunchtime the rubbish lorry has hauled away the empties, the music stops mid-sentence, and the village exhales back into silence. If you want to see rural Spain attempting to party, come then. If you want the silence, come any other weekend.

Winter Arithmetic

December to February the altitude bites. Daytime temperatures struggle past 8 °C; at night the thermometer sinks below zero and stays there. Most holiday cottages rely on wood-burners supplemented by wall-mounted electric heaters that guzzle €1 coins faster than the meter can count them. Snow is rare but not impossible—when it falls the CM-202 becomes a toboggan run, and the council grader arrives when it feels like it. Book cottages only after confirming full central heating; photographs of rustic fireplaces look romantic until you are sawing logs at dawn in sub-zero mist.

The compensation is clarity: skies so sharp you can see the snow on the Sierra de Guadarrama sixty kilometres away, and sound that travels for miles—a tractor starting in a distant farmyard feels like it is chugging past your bedroom window.

Leaving Without a Fridge Magnet

Casa de Uceda will not suit everyone. It has no gift shop, no swimming pool, no yoga retreat. What it offers is an unfiltered dose of Castilian quiet, priced precisely at zero euros. The nearest cappuccino is twenty-five kilometres away; the nearest queue for the Uffizi does not exist. Bring good shoes, a full tank of petrol, and a tolerance for your own thoughts. Stay two nights, walk the fields at sunrise, eat lamb in Uceda, and drive away before the silence starts asking awkward questions about why you ever rushed in the first place.