Olmedilla de Alarcón

The first thing you notice is the quiet. Not the polite hush of an English village at teatime, but a proper, ear-ringing silence that makes you realise how much urban white noise you've been filtering out. Then comes the altitude: 890 metres above sea level means the air tastes different here, thinner and cleaner, with a bite that reminds you this isn't the Costa del Sol.

Olmedilla de Alarcón sits where the flat cereal sea of La Mancha starts buckling into the foothills of the Iberian System. The village proper houses 136 permanent residents, though the electoral roll lists surnames scattered across half of Spain. What they've left behind is a cluster of stone houses huddled around a modest parish church, with streets wide enough for tractors rather than tour buses.

The Geography of Getting Away From It All

This is proper high-plateau country. Winters bite hard: temperatures regularly drop below freezing from November through March, and when snow comes, the CM320 regional road becomes an adventure sport. Summer brings the opposite extreme—days pushing 38°C with a sun that feels closer than it should. Spring and autumn offer the sweet spot, when the surrounding hills flush green after rain and the thermals rising off the slopes make for excellent raptor-watching.

The village elevation creates its own microclimate. While Cuenca swelters 50 kilometres north, Olmedilla often enjoys a breeze that makes evening barbecues genuinely pleasant. British visitors who've done the Tuscan thing and the Dordogne thing report that the night sky here is something else entirely—zero light pollution means you'll see the Milky Way whether you intended to or not.

Walking tracks radiate out from the village like spokes, following ancient agricultural paths. The most straightforward route heads south toward the Rambla de los Cernícalos, a dry riverbed that becomes a torrent exactly twice a year. It's a gentle 5-kilometre circuit that gains 150 metres—enough to work off the previous evening's cheese but manageable in trainers rather than full hiking kit. Serious walkers can string together longer loops through the surrounding carrascal oak forest, though you'll need GPS—these paths aren't waymarked.

What Passes for Entertainment

Let's be honest: if you're after nightlife, you've taken a wrong turn somewhere. The village contains three bars-restaurants, and that's counting generously. Two close on Mondays and Tuesdays, which means advance planning isn't just sensible—it's survival. The remaining option, Bar la Plaza, serves a decent tortilla española the size of a tractor wheel and cold beers for €1.80. They don't do cocktails. They barely do coffee.

What Olmedilla does offer is space. Rental houses cluster on the village's eastern edge, converted farm buildings with private pools that make perfect sense when you realise the nearest municipal pool is 20 kilometres away. These aren't luxury villas—expect rustic rather than refined—but they come with proper gardens, brick barbecues, and enough distance between properties that your kids can scream themselves hoarse without annoying the neighbours. Prices run £90-120 per night for a three-bedroom house outside peak season; July and August see a 40% hike.

The village shop opens 9-11am on weekdays and stocks basics: UHT milk, tinned tomatoes, decent wine at €3 a bottle. Anything more ambitious requires a 25-minute drive to Motilla del Palancar, where the Mercadona sells proper bacon and Yorkshire Tea at criminal mark-ups. Pro tip: stop at the Madrid airport supermarket on your way down. Your future self will thank you.

Eating Without Tears

Local cuisine favours the meat-and-three-veg school of cooking, though the vegetables might be chickpeas. The star dish is morteruelo, a pâté-like spread made from pork liver and spices that tastes better than it sounds—think rustic pâté crossed with haggis. Gachas, a thick porridge of flour and water fortified with chorizo, sustained shepherds through proper winters and will definitely soak up last night's rosé.

Vegetarians aren't completely stuffed. Pisto manchego—a slow-cooked ratatouille of peppers, aubergine and tomato—appears on every menu, usually topped with a fried egg. Local Manchego cheese comes in three ages: fresco (mild), semicurado (properly tangy) and curado (eyes-watering). Start with semicurado and work up.

Wine comes from the La Manchuela DO, a region that's been quietly improving while Rioja grabbed the headlines. The local rosé costs €4-6 in village bars and drinks well chilled beside the pool. Whites made from Macabeo grapes offer lemony refreshment that pairs surprisingly well with takeaway fish and chips from Motilla—yes, there's a chippy, run by an expat from Birmingham who saw a gap in the market.

The Reality Check

This isn't a place for spontaneous travellers. The bus from Cuenca runs twice daily except weekends, when it doesn't run at all. A taxi from Motilla costs €35 and requires 24 hours' notice. Mobile signal vanishes entirely in parts of the village—Vodafone users fare best, O2 customers should prepare for a digital detox. The Wi-Fi in most rental properties tops out at 15 Mbps, adequate for Netflix but hopeless for Zoom calls.

August brings Spanish families reclaiming ancestral homes, which means the village population quadruples overnight. Suddenly Bar la Plaza requires reservations, the silence shatters under competing sound systems, and that infinite horizon fills with inflatable pool toys. Visit in late September instead: temperatures hover around 24°C, the wheat stubble turns gold, and you'll have the walking tracks to yourself.

The nearest proper castle sits 20 kilometres away in Alarcón—a different village entirely, despite the similar name. Don't expect medieval pageantry in Olmedilla. Do expect conversations with retired farmers who'll explain exactly why British beef tastes different (it's the rain, apparently) and invitations to inspect their olive oil production. Accept graciously; the oil is phenomenal and they sell it in recycled five-litre water bottles for a tenner.

The Bottom Line

Olmedilla de Alarcón offers what the Dordogne offered twenty years ago before the Brits arrived en masse: cheap house wine, empty landscapes, and villagers who haven't yet grown tired of foreigners murdering their language. Come for the silence, the night sky, and the gradual realisation that you haven't checked Twitter in three days. Bring groceries, download offline maps, and pack a Spanish phrasebook. Leave your need for entertainment at home—here, watching the shadows move across the cereal fields counts as an activity, and that's precisely the point.