Anquela del Pedregal

The only traffic jam in Anquela del Pedregal happens at dusk, when a handful of crows argue over the same thermal above the church tower. Otherwise, silence pools between the stone houses like water finding its own level. At 1,300 metres on the Sierra Molina ridge, this is one of the highest inhabited spots in the Señorío de Molina, and the air is thin enough to carry the clonk of a distant goat bell with courtroom clarity.

Twenty-seven residents are officially registered, though on a weekday in March you will count fewer. Many keep the keys to empty family houses, popping up at weekends to replace a roof tile or prune a grapevine that nobody harvests. The village survives through such acts of maintenance rather than any grand economic plan. There is no shop, no bar, no mobile coverage for half the streets. If you need milk you drive 19 kilometres down the GU-621 to Molina de Aragón; if you need conversation you sit on the bench outside the locked church and wait for someone’s grandfather to shuffle past.

Stone that learnt to breathe

Everything here is made from the surrounding rock. Field boundaries are dry-stack walls rammed together without mortar; houses rise straight from bedrock as if geology itself had decided to add rooms. Granite chips glitter in the sun, and mica flashes like tiny mirrors. Look closely and you will see that many thresholds have been worn into shallow bowls by centuries of boots scraping limestone against limestone. The architectural style has no name—builders simply took what the hillside yielded and trimmed it until a wall stayed upright. Rooflines sag like tired horses, yet the structures outlasted the railway down in the valley and will probably outlast the asphalt too.

Because stone absorbs and radiates heat, summer evenings feel oddly tropical until the ridge wind snaps in after midnight. Winter is another matter. From December to March the hamlet sits in its own micro-climate of ice; pipes freeze, the earth road hardens into corrugated iron, and the solitary street lamp flickers like a nervous sentinel. Locals keep two sets of tyres stacked in barns: one for mud, one for snow. Visitors who arrive in a standard hire car are politely advised to park at the entrance and walk the last 300 metres rather than slide into the stone trough that once served as a baptismal font for livestock.

Walking where the sheep forgot the way

Tracks leave the upper village in three directions, all unmarked. The most straightforward heads south along the ridge crest to the abandoned hamlet of La Yunta, three kilometres of gentle gradient and knee-high broom. Stone beehives shaped like domed tombs sit in clearings—old shepherd shelters now used by hikers caught in sudden hail. Further on, the path drops into a pine plantation where wild boar root up the carpet of needles; their prints look remarkably like small human hands pressed into clay.

A stiffer option climbs north-east to the Cerro de San Blas (1,562 metres), a limestone crown visible from every doorway in Anquela. The ascent takes ninety minutes if you are fit, two hours if you stop to watch griffon vultures tilting on the updraft. From the summit the view stretches across two provinces: westwards the meseta rolls away like a brown ocean, while to the east the foothills of the Iberian System bruise the horizon purple. Carry water; there are no fountains above the village and the wind dehydrates faster than you expect.

Maps printed by the regional government label these routes “PR-GU 212” but paint blisters fade within a season. Downloading the free Wikiloc file before leaving Molina saves a lot of back-tracking from dead-end sheepfolds. Stout footwear is sufficient; boots are overkill except after rain when clay clogs every tread.

When the church bell rings for no one

The Assumption church is kept locked outside fiesta week. Yet if the sacristan—Mariano, house with green shutters—spots you admiring the Romanesque arch reused as a side-door lintel, he will wipe his hands on carpenter’s overalls and fetch a key the size of a small spanner. Inside, the single nave smells of wax and mouse. A retable painted in 1641 shows the Virgin ascending through clouds that look remarkably like the real ones boiling over the ridge most afternoons. The bell rope hangs temptingly close, but resist: sound carries for miles and farmers assume an accident if they hear a single toll at midday.

Festivities concentrate around 15 August, when emigrants return with car boots full of beer and grandchildren. A marquee goes up on the football pitch—really just a levelled patch of gravel—and a whole lamb rotates on a spit from dawn. Outsiders are welcome but there are no tourist prices because there are no tourists. A paper plate with meat, bread and a bandeja of migas costs €6; beer is supermarket rate. Dancing starts at midnight and finishes when the generator runs out of diesel, usually around four. Book accommodation early: every cousin claims the spare bed years in advance.

Where to sleep, what to eat, how not to starve

Accommodation choices within the municipal boundary are binary. Option one is El Pedregal Hotel en la Naturaleza, a scattering of timber cabins two kilometres below the village on the road up from Molina. Each cabin has under-floor heating, a rainfall shower and picture windows aimed at the sunrise. Rates hover around €110 for two, including a breakfast basket hung on the door at eight sharp. The British reviewer who praised the “boutique hotel suite” standards was not exaggerating, though she failed to mention the resident donkey who may nuzzle your patio glass at dawn.

Option two is to ask. Farmers sometimes let the old schoolhouse for cash; expect cold water, a fireplace and spectacular stars. Either way, bring provisions. The nearest restaurant is in Campisábalos, 12 kilometres west, open weekends only. Molina offers Bar Felipe (try the garlic soup with free-range egg) or the smarter Mesón del Cid, where roast suckling kid feeds two for €28. Pack a picnic if you intend to stay on the ridge all day; Iberian ham survives happily in a rucksack even when August thermometers touch thirty.

How to arrive without reversing into a ravine

From Madrid, the A-2 motorway east to Guadalajara, then the N-211 towards Zaragoza, exit at signs for Molina de Aragón. After the town’s second roundabout follow the GU-621 sign-posted “Anquela del Pedregal / Sierra Molina”. The tarmac lasts eleven kilometres, then you meet the unclassified track that corkscrews the final eight. The surface is firm but narrow; passing places every 400 metres demand polite Spanish choreography—left-hand down, hazard lights on, a raised hand of thanks. In winter the road is officially closed when snow exceeds 20 centimetres; the barrier is a red-and-white pole that someone simply lays on the ground when the Guardia Civil are not looking. Chains are compulsory equipment from November to April, occasionally May.

No public transport reaches the village. The weekday bus from Guadalajara to Molina connects with nothing on Saturdays and does not run Sundays. A taxi from Molina station costs €35 each way—book through your accommodation or the driver will not climb the mountain for a fare that may not exist for the return journey.

Parting advice: lower your voice, raise your eyes

Anquela del Pedregal will never feature on a “Top Ten Spanish Pueblos” list because it refuses to perform. There are no craft shops, no guided tastings, no selfie frames. What it offers instead is a demonstration of how little human company one actually needs: a roof that does not leak, bread, olives, firewood, horizon. Walk the ridge at sunset and the village shrinks to a dark knot between two greater darknesses—the pine forest below, the sky above. The lights come on one by one, not for theatre but because someone is home. Leave before night clamps down or you will find yourself inventing reasons to stay.