Torrubia

At 1,143 metres, Torrubia sits high enough that mobile phones sometimes struggle to decide which time zone they’re in. The village clock – a modest face on the church tower – keeps its own counsel anyway, running a few minutes slow for half the year and nobody bothers to adjust it. With 23 permanent residents, there’s rarely a queue for anything, let alone timekeeping.

This is the Sistema Ibérico at its most matter-of-fact: short stone streets, roofs of curved Arab tile weighted against winter gales, and a silence that arrives after the evening swallow flight and stays until the first tractor coughs at dawn. The nearest traffic light is 35 kilometres away in Molina de Aragón; the nearest London-quality flat white is, frankly, London.

What passes for a high street

The village stretches barely three lanes wide. Houses are built shoulder-to-shoulder, their walls two feet thick, doorjambs worn into smooth hollows by centuries of heavy coats. Most still have the original hay-loft hatch above the entrance, though these days it’s more likely to vent a Wi-Fi router than drying esparto grass. There is one bar, Bar Torrubia, open Friday evening through Sunday lunch outside midsummer, every day during August fiestas, and whenever María feels like it otherwise. A toasted tortilla sandwich costs €3.50 and the house red comes in a glass that could double as a tooth-mug. If the door’s shuttered, the next coffee is an eight-kilometre drive to Honrubia – worth knowing before you promise the children a post-walk hot chocolate.

Opposite the church, a stone fountain trickles potable water that residents swear cures hangovers. It also freezes solid most January nights, so bring a thermos rather than rely on a midnight refill after the bar shuts.

Walking papers

Torrubia’s greatest monument is the immediate outdoors. A spider’s web of livestock trails radiates from the last cattle grid, each one eventually joining the Cañada Real Conquense, an ancient drove road that once funnelled Merino sheep to winter pastures in Extremadura. You can follow it south-east for two hours to the abandoned hamlet of Villar de Torrubia, where roofless stone houses stand inside a double ring of collapsing wall. Add another hour and the path drops into the banks of the River Gallo, one of the few tributaries in Castilla-La Mancha that still runs year-round; kingfishers use the overhailing willows as diving boards.

Maps are downloadable from the regional website but don’t trust the dotted “forest track” line without checking the date: flash storms in 2023 washed two culverts away, leaving a metre-deep trench that will swallow an ordinary hire-car wheel. If the sky is building grey castles, turn back; the clay soil here becomes axle-deep glue in minutes.

Spring brings the best walking window – temperature in the high teens by ten o’clock, wild rosemary scenting the air, and enough daylight to be back for a late lunch of roast lamb in Molina. In July and August you need to start before eight to avoid the brass-beat sun; the compensation is a horizon so clear you can pick out the snow-streaked Pyrenees 180 kilometres distant.

Birds, boars and blackout nights

The surrounding pine plantations of Pinus pinaster are loud with woodlarks at dawn; boot a stone and you’ll probably disturb a feeding hoopoe. Serious birders bring a scope for the crags above the village where golden eagles nest each spring – best viewed from the track to the wind turbines, remembering that the access road is private and guards will ask you to park below the final gate. Locals shrug: “Walk the last kilometre, no one minds.”

Wild boar root among the holm oaks on the northern slope; keep dogs on leads unless you fancy a €60 vet bill for tusk-slice antibiotics. After dark the village bans fixed streetlights to protect migrating little owls, so torches are essential and the Milky Way performs like a planetarium dome. On new-moon nights the only competition comes from the orange glow of Zaragoza, 130 kilometres east.

When the fiesta actually matters

Torrubia’s population can swell to 120 during the August fiesta, almost all returning emigrants who left for Madrid or Barcelona in the 1960s. The programme is pinned to the church door only a week beforehand and usually features one open-air dinner, one mass with a brass band that has clearly started the party early, and a foam machine for children in the plaza. Strangers are welcomed but not pandered to – there is no tourist office, no bilingual signage, no craft stall selling fridge magnets. Bring your own earplugs if the disco rig set up outside the bar runs past 3 a.m.; no one else will apologise.

Winter arithmetic

From December to March the village road is classified as “concerted but not prioritised” by the provincial snowplough schedule. Translation: if more than 20 cm falls you may wait 48 hours for a blade. Four-wheel-drive and chains are sensible insurance; a bag of cat-litter under the back wheels will also do the job. Daytime highs hover around 5 °C, nights drop to –8 °C, and the stone houses – built for this – stay at a steady 14 °C inside without heating. Rental cottages exist but most owners shut them November to March; your best bed is the Parador de Sigüenza 45 minutes away, a converted Moorish castle with underfloor heating and a decent tempranillo list.

The practical bit you’ll pretend you read later

There is no cash machine, petrol station, pharmacy or doctor in Torrubia. Fill the tank in Molina, draw cash in Honrubia, and pack any prescription drugs before you leave Cuenca – the monthly GP visit lands on the first Tuesday, the weekly pharmacy van on Thursday morning, and both cancel if the road is icy. Mobile coverage is 4G on Movistar, patchy on other networks; internet exists but residents describe it as “educational”, meaning you’ll learn patience. The nearest supermarket with British tea bags is a Carrefour in Guadalajara, 90 minutes west. Bring your own milk; the village’s only shop closed in 2018 and is now someone’s sitting room.

Leaving without promising to return

Torrubia will not suit travellers who equate holiday with being entertained. It offers instead a calibration point: a place where the loudest noise is your own breathing on a frosty morning and where the day’s itinerary is dictated by cloud height. Turn up prepared – with food, fuel, waterproofs and realistic Spanish – and you’ll experience a Spain largely unchanged since the railway bypassed these hills in 1882. Fail to plan and you’ll spend the night hungry, cold and wondering why the bar never reopened after lunch. Either way, you’ll leave understanding why half the residents who could live anywhere still choose 1,143 metres of wind, stone and silence.