Campillo de la Jara (El)

The 08:15 tractor heading out to the dehesa is the loudest thing El Campillo de la Jara will hear all morning. At 650 m above sea-level, on a ridge that separates the basins of the Tajo and Guadiana, sound carries. A gate slamming two streets away travels like a starter’s pistol; by the time the sun clears the cork oaks, the village has already clocked on for the day.

Stone, Whitewash and the Smell of Oak Smoke

There is no postcard plaza or baroque tower here. The place is simply a tight grid of single-storey houses, their walls chalk-white against the weathered granite of doorframes. Timber gates open straight onto living rooms where the television competes with the hiss of the butano heater. Look up and you will see television aerials older than most British renters, strung between chimneys that still burn oak prunings for warmth.

The parish church occupies the highest scrap of ground, but even that is modest: a rectangle of dressed stone finished in 1783, its bell turret more functional than decorative. Inside, the temperature drops ten degrees; the only ornament of note is a faded banner carried in Semana Santa processions when Franco was still in short trousers. Services are advertised on a chalkboard that changes weekly—mass at 11:00, unless the priest is covering two other villages and arrives late.

Walk the back lanes and you will find the details travel writers pretend to notice: a 1950s petrol pump outside a closed garage, its price frozen at 16 pesetas; a stone drinking trough fed by a copper pipe; a corral where a donkey watches you over a wall exactly its own height. These things are not preserved for show. They simply haven’t broken yet.

The Countryside that Pays the Bills

Step past the last house and the meseta opens like a book. Dehesa, the Spaniards call it: open woodland of holm oak and cork, managed so that pigs, cattle and firewood all fit into the same hectare. In October the ground under the trees is black with acorns; in April it is green with young thistles the locals call tagarnina, gathered for scrambled-egg fillings. The horizon is far enough away that you can watch rain travel towards you for half an hour before it arrives.

A lattice of drove roads—cañadas—radiates from the village. The widest, Cañada Real de la Calatrava, once funnelled sheep from La Mancha to winter pasture in Extremadura; today it is a gravel track popular with weekend cyclists who appreciate the 3 % gradient and the absence of traffic. Follow it south for 7 km and you reach the Puerto de San Vicente, a fourth-category climb that appears on Spanish sportive calendars but is unknown to UK riders. Bring a 34 × 28 and you will spin up easily; the reward is a view across two provinces and, usually, a kestrel hanging in the updraft.

Maps mark dozens of footpaths, yet waymarking is sporadic. A sensible strategy is to ask at the bar for “el camino de las carboneras” and keep the village spire in sight. Spring brings carpets of Cistus ladanifer—the gum cistus that gave La Jara its name—while autumn belongs to mushroom hunters armed with curved knives and the absolute conviction that every outsider is heading for their patch.

The Kitchen, Not the Menu

There is no restaurant. Eating happens in houses or at the single bar, which opens when the owner feels like it. Order a caña and you will be asked whether you want something “para picar”: a plate of chicharrones—crisp pork belly that tastes of rosemary and wood smoke—perhaps a wedge of local sheep’s cheese wrapped in esparto grass. Prices hover around €2.50 a tapa; payment is cash only and the till is an old wooden drawer.

If you are staying in the village (two self-catering cottages, €55 a night, bookable through the town hall website) the butcher’s van calls on Tuesday and Friday mornings. Stand outside with the neighbours and you can buy exactly what they buy: morcilla heavy with cumin, shoulder of milk-fed lamb, a length of chorizo cured in a bedroom wardrobe. The mobile bakery appears on Wednesdays; the fish van, smelling of ice and sea 160 km away, on Thursdays. Plan badly and you will eat toast.

Special-occasion food is game-based. Wild-boar stew arrives at fiestas in cauldrons borrowed from the hunters’ society, thickened with bread and sweet paprika. Gazpacho manchego—the plate-wide, game-broth version, not the chilled tomato soup Brits expect—uses unleavened flatbread that soaks up the juices and demands a spoon. If you are invited, bring a bottle of something decent from Toledo supermarket; local etiquette is to refuse twice and accept on the third offer.

When the Village Remembers It Has a Calendar

August is the only month when El Campillo feels busy. The fiestas patronales pull back anyone who ever escaped to Madrid or Barcelona, and the population swells to perhaps 800. Brass bands march at midday, fireworks go off at 03:00, and the plaza becomes an open-air kitchen where grandmothers guard paella pans the diameter of a tractor tyre. Accommodation is impossible unless you have a cousin; book for September instead and you will have the place to yourself.

January brings San Antón. At dawn on the 17th, bonfires of vine prunings light every street corner; dogs, hens and even one confused alpaca are led to the church door for a splash of holy water. The priest mutters a blessing, someone hands out anisette, and by 09:00 the village smells of wet fur and smoke. It is the sort of event guidebooks label “authentic”; here it is simply the right thing to do when the nights are still 14 hours long.

Getting There, Staying Sane

Public transport is a fiction. From Madrid’s Estación Sur, take the ALSA coach to Los Navalmorales (two hours, €11.45), then phone the village taxi—Miguel, mobile in the window of the bakery—who will collect you for €25. A hire car from Barajas airport is easier: A4 south, exit 98 towards Navalmorales, then CM-415 for 23 km of empty tarmac. Petrol stations are scarce; fill up in Oropesa.

Phone coverage is patchy; Movistar works on the north side of the plaza, Vodafone on the church steps. British drivers should note that the last 5 km are unlit and populated by wild boar after dusk; keep the speed below 60 km/h unless you fancy explaining to the Guardia why there is fur in the grille.

The altitude tempers summer heat—nights drop to 16 °C even in July—but winter is serious. January mornings start at –3 °C, and the houses, built for July infernos, can feel like stone tents. Bring slippers; the floors are tiles laid directly onto earth.

Leaving Without the Gift-Shop Moment

There is nothing to buy except what people make for themselves: honey labelled with a biro, a handful of dried thyme, perhaps a second-hand book swapped in the bar. The village does not do souvenirs because it has not decided tourism is a job. That is both the appeal and the warning. Come expecting artisan ice-cream and you will leave disappointed; come prepared to walk at the pace of a man who knows every tree on his land and El Campillo de la Jara will make sense. The tractor that woke you returns at dusk, headlights picking out the same ruts. Gates close, smoke rises, and the meseta goes quiet again—until the next morning, 08:15 sharp.