Casas de Juan Núñez

The afternoon bus from Albacete drops you beside a stone bench that faces a field of gnarled vines. No ticket office, no taxi rank, just the bench and a hand-painted board that reads “Casas de Juan Núñez – 705 m”. The driver restarts the engine, the dust settles, and the silence is so complete you can hear the vines creak in the breeze. At that moment you realise the village is not simply “inland Spain”; it is a place that measures altitude before it counts inhabitants.

A Grid That Opens to Sky

Most Spanish maps colour this stretch of La Manchuela a uniform beige, yet the ground is anything but flat. The plateau has begun to ripple, soft waves of limestone that lift the road 300 m above the plain you left near the motorway. Inside the village the streets follow a strict grid—evidence of nineteenth-century repopulation rather than medieval chaos—so a five-minute stroll takes you from one edge of town to the other. Reach the last row of houses and the land falls away; suddenly you are staring across a checkerboard of cereal plots that fade into the hazy trough of the Júcar gorge. The contrast makes the village feel loftier than it is, a ship’s bridge over an ocean of wheat.

That altitude matters. Summer nights drop to 17 °C even when Albacete swelters at 28 °C, and winter mornings bring the first frost of the region, whitening the terracotta roof tiles while the valley below stays green. Walkers setting out at dawn in April still see their breath, yet by eleven the sun is hot enough to burn. Pack both fleece and sunscreen—locals do.

Stone, Brick and the Smell of Stew

The guidebooks call Casas de Juan Núñez “agrarian”, a label that sounds flat until you notice how the buildings store the year’s produce. Ground-floor doorways are tall enough for a tractor trailer; iron grilles still protect tiny windows once used for drying garlic. Walk Calle Nueva at seven in the evening and every other doorway exhales the same aroma: pisto manchego simmering on a wood-fired range, sweet tomatoes reducing in pans the size of truck wheels. There is no restaurant row, just two bars and a single bakery whose shutters rise at six and fall at two. Tourist menus do not exist; instead you ask for “lo que hay”—whatever is on—and receive a plate of gazpacho manchego (the game stew, not the cold soup) built on pigeon or hare shot the previous week.

Vegetarians survive on pisto and migas—fried breadcrumbs with grapes that taste better than they sound—yet even they are advised to try the local queso manchego aged only forty days, soft enough to bend and nothing like the supermarket wedges sold in British supermarkets. A portion costs €3.50, usually served on a chipped plate that predates the euro.

Tracks for Legs, Not Likes

The village sits on the GR-160 footpath, a 140-kilometre loop that links eight La Manchuela settlements. Signs are wooden, hand-carved, and spaced just far enough apart to make you question the last turn. Heading south-east the path drops into the Rambla de Guarramanes, a dry riverbed where bee-eaters nest in May and June; going north it climbs gently through almond terraces until the land opens into vineyards run by the Valdeganga cooperative. Either direction offers four hours of walking with no café, no fountain, and almost no shade—carry two litres of water in summer and start early. Mountain-bikers share the same tracks; the surface is hard gravel, manageable on a hybrid, though thin tyres will pinch on the limestone shards.

If that sounds too strenuous, borrow the village’s audio guide—actually the mayor’s WhatsApp number printed on a laminated card. Call it and he answers on the second ring, then talks for twelve minutes about irrigation channels while you stand outside the sixteenth-century church. The service is free; the only cost is the awkwardness of declining his offer to unlock the bell-tower so you can photograph the plain.

When Silence Has a Date

August 15 changes everything. The population doubles as former residents return for the fiesta patronal, car boots bulging with fireworks and legs of jamón. Plastic bunting appears overnight, the plaza fills with folding tables, and the bakery imports an industrial oven so the queue for churros stretches round the corner. By eleven at night the band starts, playing Spanish chart hits from 2003 at a volume that makes the church bells vibrate. Ear-plugs recommended; rooms at Hostal La Herradura (€55 with garage) face the square, so light sleepers should book the back annex or join the dancing until the tamboriles stop at five.

September is quieter but hotter. The grape harvest begins at dawn to beat the 30 °C afternoons; tractors towing trailers of tempranillo clog the main street, leaking purple juice that attracts wasps. Visitors are welcome to pick—turn up at the cooperative in old trainers and you’ll be handed secateurs and a breakfast bocadillo of tortilla. Payment is a bottle of last year’s wine and the right to stamp your feet in the lagares, an experience no London tasting room can replicate.

Getting There, Getting Out

Casas de Juan Núñez is 90 minutes by car from Alicante airport, most of it on the deserted A-31 after Villena. Petrol is cheaper at the supermarket pumps in Albacete than on the motorway—fill up before the final 30 km. Public transport exists only on weekdays: the Albacete–Valdeganga bus will stop on request at the village entrance, but the 14:30 return service leaves you a two-hour wait if the harvest mass runs late. Without wheels you are effectively marooned, which is either the point or the problem, depending on your view of solitude.

The nearest cash machine is twelve kilometres away in Bonete and many bars are still cash-only. Bring euro notes; the bakery cannot break a fifty. Mobile coverage is reliable on Vodafone and Movistar, patchy on EE roaming—download offline maps before you leave the main road.

An Honest Farewell

Stay longer than a night and the village starts to reveal its compromises. The shop keeps no fixed hours, the pharmacy visits only twice a week, and January fog can trap you for days when the pass to the motorway ices over. Yet those same inconveniences filter out the coach parties and souvenir stalls that clog better-known towns. What remains is a place where altitude is measured not in bragging rights but in wheat colour, where lunch is dictated by the game shot that week, and where the loudest sound at midnight is usually a dog barking at its own echo. Come prepared—water, cash, Spanish phrase-book—and the bench beside the vines may feel like the highest, quietest seat in all of Castilla-La Mancha.