Cobeta

The village appears as a dark smudge on the brow of a hill, one minute before your phone loses signal for good. At 1,116 metres, Cobeta sits high enough for your ears to pop on the final approach, the CM-2016 wriggling upwards through thyme-scented scrub until the tarmac finally runs out of enthusiasm.

This is the Señorío de Molina, a slab of Castilla-La Mancha that feels closer to the Meseta Norte than to Don Quixote’s windmills. The horizons are huge, the soil thin, and the wind has nothing to break it for miles. Stone houses huddle shoulder-to-shoulder as if sharing body heat; their roofs slope at improbable angles, weighted down by generations of replacement tiles. Adobe walls the colour of digestive biscuits bulge gently, kept upright by annual coats of lime wash and sheer habit.

Silence for Sale

Roughly a hundred names appear on the municipal roll, though that figure triples when August returnees inflate the place with grandchildren and transistor radios. The rest of the year Cobeta sounds like this: a distant dog, your own boot soles on grit, and the soft wheeze of vultures riding thermals overhead. Night brings a sky so dark that the Milky Way reflects in puddles; light pollution is something that happens to other postcodes.

Walk fifty paces beyond the last cottage and you are in the Alto Tajo in all its limestone, juniper-scented glory. Way-marked footpaths strike east towards the Cabrera gorge and west onto the paramera plateau, both starting with the same steep scrabble through holm oak and onto open rock. The going underfoot is rough: loose shale, ankle-trapping ruts, the occasional washed-out section that demands hands-in-pocket balance. Proper boots are non-negotiable; the village pharmacy (open two mornings a week) stocks more prayer cards than plasters.

Expect to meet no one once the track levels out. Instead you get griffon vultures planing overhead, the odd Iberian ibex watching from a crag, and a silence thick enough to taste. The terrain rolls rather than soars, so a moderately fit walker can cover twelve kilometres before lunch without ever breaking a thousand metres of ascent. Spring brings drifts of purple lithodora and the clatter of pheasants; autumn turns the broom bronze and fills the air with the smell of damp thyme. Mid-summer is surprisingly tolerable—altitude knocks the edge off the heat—but mid-winter can lock the upper paths in frost until noon, and sudden snow has trapped cars for a day or two.

What Passes for a High Street

Cobeta’s single paved lane is barely the width of a Bedford van. There is no bank, no petrol pump, and—crucially—no cashpoint. The last ATM stands beside Molina de Aragón’s medieval castle, thirty minutes away by car and a lifetime away in mood. Mobile coverage flickers between one bar and none, so download offline maps before you leave the A-2.

The grocery, identified by a hand-painted “Ultramarinos” sign that fades a little more each year, unlocks its shutters on Saturday and Sunday mornings only. Shelves hold UHT milk, tinned tomatoes, rubbery chorizo and not a lot else. Fresh bread arrives in a white van at ten o’clock; if the driver is in a chatting mood it might be ten-thirty. Miss the slot and you will be breaking breakfast off yesterday’s baguette like a medieval penitent.

For anything greener than an onion you shop before you arrive. Guadalajara’s Carrefour is two hours west; the covered market in Molina offers local lamb, jarred honey and the kind of cheese that keeps without refrigeration. Brits nursing tea dependencies should pack teabags—locals drink manzanilla or instant coffee, and the village kettle is the sort that takes its time.

Eating (or Not)

There is no pub, no tapas trail, no chef interpreting grandmother’s recipes through foam. What you get instead is the honesty of self-catering in a house that may still have the original hearth. Most rentals (there are four) provide a serviceable gas hob, mismatched cutlery and a dining table wide enough for maps. Lamb from the weekly market, potatoes from Torremocha del Pinar, and a bottle of Cencibel from the co-op in Corduente turn into a slow roast that smells of rosemary and wood smoke.

If you insist on being served, drive ten minutes to Torremocha’s roadside grill, where €14 buys a plate of chuletón thick enough to stun a vegetarian at fifty paces. Molina’s Mesón El Cazador does a three-course menú del día with wine included; choose the roast chicken if the stew looks like it has been waving at passing diners since lunchtime. Book a taxi back before you start on the second carafe—night driving here involves wild boar, unlit cyclists and the sudden urge to swerve at shadows.

When the Village Decides to Party

Festivities compress themselves into a long weekend around the fifteenth of August, when emigrants roll up with Madrid number plates and cool boxes. A sound system appears on the plaza, children race battery-powered cars until midnight, and someone’s uncle pours communal sangria from a dustbin-sized tub. The religious bit—a short procession behind the statue of the Virgin—starts at nine and finishes before the serious drinking begins. Visitors are welcome, though you will be pegged as English within seconds by your footwear. Join in anyway; the playlist hasn’t changed since 1997 and everyone knows the steps.

Winter keeps its head down. New Year’s Eve is celebrated, if that is the word, by a group dinner in the former schoolhouse; tickets are sold in November and sell out at forty places. The rest of the calendar is marked quietly: bonfires for San Antón in January, pancakes (yes, pancakes) for Carnival because the village baker spent a season in Lincolnshire circa 1992, and a late-night mass at Christmas that finishes with short glasses of anisette and a slice of almond cake. If you want fireworks, wait till the feast of San Blas in Molina; Cobeta contributes one sleepy trumpet and a box of party poppers.

Leaving Without a Scratch

The road down to the main highway is sinuous and occasionally suicidal—stone drops on one side, free-range cattle on the other. Add roaming wild boar at dawn and dusk, plus the certainty of meeting a tractor round the bend, and you will understand why locals rarely exceed 40 km/h. Fill the tank in Molina; petrol stations thin out fast once you head into the hills. In winter carry snow chains even if the sky is blue; weather blows in from the North Plateau without knocking.

Madrid’s Barajas airport is two hours west on the A-2, most of it fast dual carriageway. Allow an extra thirty minutes for the queue at the car-hire desk and another twenty for the inevitable confusion over whether you really meant Cobeta, not Cómpeta. You didn’t. One is high, cold and empty; the other is on the Costa del Sol and full of estate agents. Mix them up and you will be 500 kilometres adrift before the sat-nav recovers its sense of humour.

Worth the Bother?

Cobeta will not change your life. It offers no souvenir shops, no sunset jazz, no infinity pool overlooking an olive grove. What it does offer is a chance to remember how quiet the world can be, how dark the night, how satisfying a cracked earthenware bowl of beans can taste when you have walked eight miles to earn it. Come for the walking, stay for the silence, leave before you need a haircut—because you won’t get one here.