Honrubia

The church bell strikes noon and every dog in Honrubia starts barking. It's not a digital chime or a recorded carillon, but the real thing: bronze on bronze, echoing off whitewashed walls at 820 metres above sea level. At this altitude the air carries a dryness that makes the cereal fields shimmer like water; from the plaza you can watch the grain silos change colour as clouds drift across an enormous sky.

Most British travellers discover the village by accident, usually while bombing down the A-3 from Madrid to Valencia and wondering whether Spain still exists beyond the service stations. Honrubia sits 80 km south-east of Cuenca, far enough from the motorway to feel detached, close enough to reach in an hour once you've collected a hire car. The final approach is textbook Castile: straight road, undulating plateau, the sierra rising blue-grey in the distance. Then the speed limit drops, a stone wall appears, and you've arrived somewhere that still measures distance in leagues and time in seasons.

A Plateau That Breathes

The altitude matters more than the guidebooks admit. Summer afternoons can be ten degrees cooler than Madrid, but the sun is fierce; in winter the thermometer brushes freezing and the wind whips across open fields with nothing to stop it until Portugal. Spring and autumn are the comfortable windows—May brings poppies among the wheat, October smells of crushed grapes and wood smoke—yet even in July Britons appreciate the drop in temperature after the capital's furnace.

Honrubia's 1,500 inhabitants have learned to read the sky. They plant barley when the oak buds are the size of a lizard's foot, harvest when the cicadas start at 3 p.m. sharp. Visitors expecting manicured trails won't find them; instead there is a lattice of farm tracks that double as walking routes. Follow one east at dawn and you'll cover 6 km before breakfast, passing stone huts where shepherds once sheltered, meeting perhaps a tractor and absolutely no-one else. The reward is a horizon so wide it feels nautical, broken only by the occasional holm oak or the distant silhouette of a ruined windmill—Cervantes country, though the don-quixote brigade actually lurk thirty kilometres away.

Lunch at Ground Level

Food here is calibrated to hard labour. The midday menu at Bar Central—€12 if you skip the wine, €15 if you don't—might start with migas ruleras, breadcrumbs fried in chorizo fat, then move on to perdiz en escabeche, partridge stewed until it resembles a gamey coq-au-vin. Vegetarians get pisto manchego, a chunky ratatouille crowned with a fried egg; the kitchen will remove the egg if asked, though they'll look puzzled. Queso manchego arrives in thick triangles, drizzled with local honey that tastes of rosemary and thyme. House tinto is softer than Rioja, served at cellar temperature because the bottle lives under the bar next to the coffee machine.

Dinner is another matter. By eight the plaza is in shadow, temperature falling like a stone; most kitchens reopen at nine, but only if the owner feels like it. British stomachs should stock up at lunchtime or buy bread, cold cuts and fruit from the tiny Spar-style shop on Calle Mayor. It shuts at 14:00 on Saturdays and all day Sunday, so time your self-catering carefully.

What Passes for Sights

There is no checklist. The parish church, rebuilt after a fire in 1803, has a single nave and a bell-tower you can climb if the sacristan is in a good mood—tip him €2 and he'll point out the grain silos that mark the village boundary. A couple of Renaissance doorways survive on Calle Nueva, their stone coats of arms eroded by wind-blown grit. The old wine cellars—bodegas cut into the hillside—are now mostly garages, though one or two owners will unlock a heavy wooden door to show you where the harvest was once trodden.

The real museum is the architecture itself: houses rendered with lime wash the colour of Double Cream, wooden balconies big enough for a chair, iron grills forged in nearby Villanueva de la Jara. Look down and you'll spot metal rings set into the cobbles for tethering mules; look up and swifts are nesting under the eaves, screeching like faulty supermarket trolleys.

When the Village Parties

Festivity is seasonal and largely domestic. The hogueras de San Antón on 17 January turn the main square into a bonfire and barbecue; outsiders are welcome but there's no programme, just turn up after dark with something to drink. Summer fiestas revolve around the patron saint, Santa Ana, with a low-key procession, a foam party for teenagers, and a Saturday-night dance that finishes when the band runs out of beer. Semana Santa is austere: hooded penitents, two brass bands, no tourists. If you want fireworks and souvenir stalls, try Cuenca instead.

The Practical Bits Without the Bullet Points

Honrubia has no cash machine; the nearest 24-hour ATM is 12 km away in San Clemente, so pocket euros before you leave the airport. Mobile coverage is patchy—EE seems to hold a 4G signal on the plaza, Vodafone disappears entirely. Buses from Cuenca arrive twice daily except Sundays; the last return leaves at 16:30, a fact several British visitors have learned the hard way after a €60 taxi ride. Driving is straightforward, but Google underestimates rural times by about twenty minutes, more if you meet a combine harvester. In winter carry a coat even if Madrid is balmy; up here frost is routine and the CM-311 can ice over after midnight.

Accommodation is limited to two small hotels and a handful of village houses let through the regional tourist board. Expect to pay €55–€70 for a double room, breakfast usually included but served at Spanish hours: coffee and toast any time after seven if you ask nicely, full spread only after nine. Book ahead for weekends in May and October; the rest of the year you can turn up and knock.

Leaving Without the Hard Sell

Honrubia will never feature on a "Top Ten" list, and the locals prefer it that way. What it offers is a calibration device for anyone who suspects Spain has become too glossy: real farming schedules, real lunch hours, real night skies where Orion is still visible above the sodium glow. Come for a night and you'll leave with a heightened sense of how quickly the rest of Europe has moved to 24-hour everything. Stay for three and you might find yourself checking property prices, though be warned: the estate agent only opens on Tuesday mornings and he likes to close for brandy afterwards.