Torremocha del Pinar

The thermometer reads eight degrees cooler than Madrid, even in May. At 1,291 metres above sea level, Torremocha del Pinar sits high enough that your ears might pop on the final approach, and the air carries that thin, resinous scent of pine you normally associate with Scottish highlands rather than central Spain. Yet here it is, forty-odd permanent residents clinging to a ridge in Guadalajara province, surrounded by a forest that stretches far enough to swallow Sheffield.

Stone, Silence and the Sound of Wind

Arriving feels like interrupting a conversation that has been running for centuries. The village's single street narrows to a cart's width between stone houses whose timber beams have turned silver with age. Most doors remain shut; many belong to weekenders from Madrid or Zaragoza who drive up when the heat on the plain becomes unbearable. Their absence is audible. A tractor idles somewhere below the church. A dog barks once, then thinks better of it. Otherwise the dominant sound is the wind moving through the Pinus nigra canopy that gives the place its name.

This is not abandoned Spain, merely thinned-out Spain. The council keeps the streetlights working and the tiny Plaza Mayor swept, but nobody has bothered to repaint the closed-down bar's shutters since 2009. Instead, villagers gather in the social club next to the church when they need company. It opens Thursday to Sunday, serves beer at €1.80 a caña, and closes precisely at 22:00 unless someone's birthday demands an extension. Visitors are welcome; the treasurer simply writes your name in the ledger and trusts you'll settle on the way out.

Walking Where the Resinairos Once Earned Their Living

The real map begins where the tarmac ends. From the top of the village a farm track plunges into the forest, following an old resin-collectors' path. For the best part of a century crews came here each spring to slash V-shaped cuts in the pine bark and hang ceramic pots to catch the sticky rosin. The trade died when synthetic substitutes arrived, but the cuts are still visible on the oldest trunks like pale scars. Follow the track for twenty minutes and you reach the Collado del Pinar, a grassy saddle where shepherds once overnighted before driving sheep down to the Jalon valley. Today it makes a natural picnic spot; bring your own water because the medieval fuente beside the track runs only after heavy rain.

Keener walkers can loop back along the Cuesta de la Muela, a limestone ridge that gives sudden views south across the meseta. The whole circuit is 7 km, gains 250 m, and takes a leisurely two hours. Markers are non-existent after the first kilometre, so download the IGN 1:25,000 map beforehand or stick to the main forest rides which all eventually meet the GU-212. In April these rides glow with Spanish bluebells and the improbably scarlet blooms of Lallemantia iberica, a plant you will find in no British field guide.

October brings a different crowd. Dawn cars arrive with Madrid number plates and boots lined with wicker baskets. Mushroom hunters spread silently through the trees, scanning the duff for boletus and the prized níscalo (Lactarius deliciosus). If you fancy joining them, brush up on identification first; the local hospital in Molina de Aragón deals with at least one poisoning case each autumn. Selling your haul is technically illegal without a permit, yet a discreet exchange of cash often takes place behind the social club on Sunday mornings: €16 a kilo for níscalos, €40 for a prime cepe.

Seasons at Altitude

Winter arrives early and stays late. The first snow can fall in November and still lie in north-facing gullies well into April. When that happens the GU-212 becomes a toboggan run; the province grits it sporadically, but winter tyres or chains are advisable. Those who do make the effort find a monochrome landscape where every rooftop chimney smokes and the village's handful of residents emerges only to fetch bread from the mobile shop that stops outside the church at 11:00 on Tuesdays.

Summer, by contrast, is the season of return. Population swells to perhaps 120 as grandchildren arrive from the cities. The evening paseo becomes a slow crawl between the two benches in the plaza, grandparents comparing rainfall figures and the price of diesel. Daytime temperatures reach 28 °C instead of the 38 °C suffered down in the Tajo basin, so bring a jumper for the night which reliably drops to 14 °C even in July. That is when the pine processionary moths appear; watch for their white silky tents on the branch tips and do not touch—those hairs raise blisters on human skin.

How to Get Here, Where to Sleep, What to Eat

No train comes within 40 km. From the UK you fly to Madrid or Zaragoza, hire a car, and head north-east for ninety minutes on the A-2 and then the GU-212. The final 22 km twist through juniper scrub and sudden limestone outcrops; allow forty minutes and keep an eye out for wild boar at dusk. Public transport does exist—a Thursday-only bus from Molina de Aragón—but it deposits you at 11:00 and leaves at 14:00, which is just long enough for lunch and a stroll if you fancy the logistical challenge.

Accommodation is limited. The village itself offers two self-catering houses—Casa de la Abuela and Casa Rural El Pinar—both restored stone cottages sleeping four, priced around €90 per night with a two-night minimum. Heating is by wood-burning stove; the owners leave the first basket of logs free and charge €5 for each extra. Book through the provincial tourism site or simply phone the number taped inside the bakery window in Molina; someone in the village keeps the keys and will meet you within twenty minutes. Alternative bases lie half an hour away in Molina or the hill-town of Tamajón, but then you miss the night sky.

Eating options are similarly restrained. No restaurant operates during the week, but if you reserve a day ahead the social club will serve a three-course menú del día (€12) featuring whatever Maria Luisa has culled from her garden: migas with grapes and chorizo, perhaps, followed by conejo al ajillo and a slab of cuajada with local honey. Wine comes from Uclés in neighbouring Cuenca and costs €2.50 a glass. Weekend visitors sometimes fire up the communal barbecue behind the church; if invited, bring your own meat and do not refuse the first pour of herbero, a sweet anise liqueur that tastes like liquid liquorice allsorts.

The Honest Verdict

Torremocha del Pinar will never feature on a coach-tour itinerary. It offers neither souvenir shops nor selfie backdrops, and the mobile signal drops to 3G if you stand in the wrong corner of the plaza. What it does provide is altitude without attitude: a place where you can walk for three hours and meet more roe deer than humans, where the night sky still looks bruised with stars, and where the bread arrives warm because the driver knows exactly who wants what before he even stops. Come prepared—fill the tank, load the map, pack a fleece—and the village repays with a kind of quiet that is becoming harder to buy anywhere in Europe. Fail to plan and you will sit hungry in a shuttered street wondering why nobody warned you. Consider yourself warned—and possibly tempted.