Pozoamargo

The bar opens at seven, but the bread lorry arrives at half past. By then the square already smells of diesel and fresh crust; two men in overalls are shifting crates of empties while the baker’s wife writes IOUs on the backs of lottery tickets. Nobody checks the time—sunlight has only just cleared the grain silo—yet everyone is exactly where they need to be. This is Pozoamargo, population 279, altitude 750 m, and it keeps its own rhythm.

A horizon that moves

Stand on the church step and you can watch the landscape breathe. In April the wheat is ankle-high and the plain looks almost English, a soft green that could be Norfolk until you notice the soil is the colour of rusted iron. By June the stalks have turned metallic, rippling like sheet steel in the wind. Heat haze blurs the edge of the sky so completely that lorries on the N-420 seem to drive straight into nothing. The only verticals for miles are the stone bell-tower and, away to the south, the hump of the Sierra de Alcaraz, snow-dusted until Easter. It is scenery engineered for silence: no cork-oak thickets, no river gorges, just space and the occasional hawk.

That emptiness is the point. British motorists bombing down the A-3 to Valencia usually miss the turn-off at Tarancón; those who don’t are rewarded with a road that narrows, rises and finally delivers a village so small you can walk from one end to the other before your rental car cools. There is no petrol station, no chemist, no souvenir shop—only a single bar, a bakery that opens three mornings a week, and streets wide enough for tractors to U-turn.

What passes for attractions

The parish church of San Pedro keeps its doors unlocked. Inside, six rows of dark pews face a gilded altarpiece rescued from a fire in 1834; scorch marks still ladder the bottom panels. A laminated sheet explains—in Spanish only—that the baroque baldaquin was carted here from a ruined monastery near Alarcón, 40 km away, by oxen paid in wine. Look up and you’ll see the original Mudejar ceiling, a lattice of cedar beams painted with eight-pointed stars. The caretaker will appear if you linger; she’ll expect a euro for the light but will settle for conversation.

Beyond the church the village map is simple: four streets named after crops—Calle del Trigo, Calle de la Cebada—radiate from a concrete plaza furnished with a stone cross and a bench. Walk any street to its end and you hit wheat. The houses are low, thick-walled, whitewashed every spring whether they need it or not. Doors are painted the traditional indigo that once signalled a widow’s house; now it is just habit. Peer over a wrought-iron gate and you’ll see the classic Manchego floor-plan: a narrow entrance passage giving onto a square patio where peppers dry on string and a tortoise dozes under a geranium.

Eating on agricultural time

Food happens when the bar decides. Officially the kitchen opens at 14.00 and 21.00; in practice the grill fires up once eight people have ordered. Phone before noon if you want lamb on a Monday. The laminated menu lists gazpacho manchego (a winter stew of game and flatbread, nothing to do with Andalusian tomato soup), migas ruleras (fried breadcrumbs with grapes and bacon), and caldereta de cordero so tender the bones slide out like loose teeth. A quarter-litre of house tinto from Villanueva de la Jara costs €1.80 and arrives chilled even in January. Vegetarians get pisto manchego—Spain’s answer to ratatouille—plus a lecture from the cook about why onions must be diced, not sliced.

There is no shop selling local cheese, but ask at the bakery and María Jesús will rummage in a fridge at the back, emerging with a cloth-wrapped manchego curado aged fourteen months. It tastes of thyme and sheep’s milk, milder than the supermarket wedges flown to British airports. She’ll weigh it on antique scales and write the price in a school exercise book: €12 a kilo, cash only.

How to fill an afternoon (or not)

Pozoamargo has no signed footpaths; instead you follow the tractor tracks that fan out between fields. The earth is so flat you can plot a 5 km loop using the church tower as a compass and still be back for coffee. In May the verges foam with poppies; in September storks balance on irrigation pylons, clacking like faulty wireless. Take binoculars: you’ll spot lesser kestrels, calandra larks, and the occasional golden eagle riding the thermals.

Cyclists appreciate the same grid of farm roads: tarmac smooth as a snooker table, traffic one combine harvester per hour. The gradient is imperceptible until you realise your ears have popped—750 m feels higher than it sounds, and winter mornings can start at minus six. Bring layers; the sun drops fast, and once it does the temperature crashes like a split lift.

Wine buffs can arrange visits to Bodegas Verum in neighbouring El Provencio (20 min drive), a family cooperative that ferments tempranillo in clay jars buried to their necks. Tours are €12, but you must book by WhatsApp and arrive sober—Castilian driving limits are stricter than the UK’s.

When the village returns to itself

August fiestas turn the square into an open-air kitchen. Half the population now lives in Madrid or Valencia; they come back with folding chairs and recipes inherited from grandmothers who never saw the sea. On the night of San Roque a brass band plays pasodobles until the generator overheats, and teenagers sneak off to the grain silo to drink calimocho from plastic cola bottles. Outsiders are welcome but not announced: buy a raffle ticket for the ham, dance when the music starts, and someone’s aunt will press a plate of churros into your hands at 3 a.m.

Carnival in February is smaller, colder, funnier. Men dress as widows and parade a dummy bride made of straw; the procession ends at the bar where the effigy is “divorced” with a jug of wine and set alight in the car park. Fire brigade attendance is optional—last year they arrived just in time to toast sausages on the embers.

Getting there, getting out

From Madrid Barajas the drive is 1 h 45 min: A-3 to Tarancón, then CM-412 and CM-210. The final 12 km weave through almond groves; watch for wild boar at dusk. There is no bus on weekends; the weekday service from Cuenca reaches Pozoamargo at 14.30 and departs at 06.30 next day, timings that assume you are visiting family, not sightseeing.

Accommodation is limited to one three-bedroom rural house, Casa de la Tercia, €70 a night. It has thick walls, Wi-Fi that works if the wind is easterly, and a roof terrace where the Milky Way looks close enough to snag on the television aerial. Book early—there is no Plan B within 30 km.

Fill the tank in Motilla del Palancar, withdraw cash before you leave the motorway, and download offline maps. Street lighting is ornamental; after nine the village is lit mainly by kitchen windows. That darkness, like the silence, is part of the deal. Leave expecting nothing more than a church, a bar, and a sky the size of the Atlantic, and Pozoamargo will hand you exactly enough.