Fuentelespino de Moya

Dawn at 1,100 metres

The church bell strikes seven and the only reply is a dog barking somewhere below the crag. From the village rim you look straight into a bowl of pine tops, their fragrance carried uphill by air cool enough to make you zip your jacket. Fuentelespino de Moya wakes slowly: a tractor coughs, a metal shutter rattles up, an elderly man in carpet slippers shuffles to the fountain with a plastic jerry-can. No coaches, no souvenir racks, not even a cash machine. Just altitude, granite underfoot and the sense that nobody has bothered to script a sales pitch for the place.

Stone that learned to breathe

Houses here are built from the mountain they sit on. Chunky granite walls, timber balconies no wider than a forearm, roofs pitched steep enough to shrug off winter snow. Many still have the original threshing floor out front—stone circles where wheat was once trodden by mules, now used as parking for dusty Seat Ibizas. Corrugated haylofts lean at tipsy angles; some have been patched into weekend hideaways with under-floor heating and Wi-Fi that flickers whenever the wind changes.

The lanes are too narrow for anything bigger than a pickup, so you explore on foot. Every corner reveals something functional turned ornamental: an iron bread oven now stuffed with geraniums, a feed trough converted to a bird bath, a set of bull horns guarding somebody’s letter box. Notice the wooden rails outside most doors—designed for tying up donkeys, today they hold walking poles or a child’s bicycle. The village isn’t preserved; it’s simply still doing the job it was designed for.

Walking without waymarks

Maps exist, but locals trust memory. From the fountain follow the concrete track that dissolves into a pine-shaded hollow; twenty minutes later you’re on the Cuerda de la Mocha, an old drove road running along a limestone spine. Griffon vultures cruise at eye level, riding thermals that rise from the Low Serranía. If you’re quiet you’ll hear their wing tips cut the air.

There are no entrance fees, no designated viewpoints, just occasional cairns left by shepherds. Paths split and re-split: left takes you down to an abandoned snow-well where ice was packed in straw for summer markets; right climbs to a volcanic slab nicknamed “the raft” for its resemblance to a ship’s prow. Take trainers in summer, proper boots after rain—clay here cakes like wet biscuit and refuses to leave your soles.

The calendar that still matters

August brings the fiesta patronal. The population quadruples as grandchildren return from Valencia and Madrid. Temporary bars shell out under canvas awnings; one evening is reserved for a communal paella cooked in a pan two metres wide. Visitors are welcome but not announced—if you want to help chop wood or stir rice, simply roll up your sleeves. Fireworks are modest: three rockets, a string of bangers, then everyone drifts off to dance chambao in the square until the generator runs out of diesel.

Mid-January belongs to San Antón. Bonfires flare on the ridge at dusk; neighbours drag old vine stumps and unwanted pallets into a pile that can be seen from the motorway far below. Sausages appear from coat pockets, bread is skewered on pruning sticks, red wine passed from hand to hand. The ceremony feels half pagan, half parish noticeboard—fire for warmth, smoke for blessing, gossip for glue.

What you’ll eat (and when)

The grocer’s van—white, unmarked—honks its arrival every Tuesday and Friday at eleven. Bread is delivered in plastic crates still warm from the Motilla bakery; yoghurts are stacked beside bunches of coriander that wilt within hours. If you miss the van, provisions come from Moya, twelve kilometres down a switch-back road that ices over in January.

In winter locals favour gazpacho manchego, a game stew thickened with flat-bread, not the chilled tomato soup Brits expect. Ask for the chicken version if hare feels too rural. Spring means wild asparagus scrambled with eggs; autumn brings níscalos, saffron-milk caps sautéed in olive oil and tipped over toast. Queso manchego curado is aged in a cave near Villalba de la Sierra—nuttier and less salty than the pre-packed wedges sold in UK supermarkets. Pair it with a rosado from Serranía de Cuenca, light enough for lunch yet sturdy enough for mountain air.

The practical bit no one puts on postcards

Stay the night. Day-trippers arrive, blink at the silence, and leave before the bar shuts at ten. Two cave houses have been restored as rentals: constant temperature year-round, walls a metre thick, Wi-Fi that copes with email but sulks at Netflix. Expect €70 a night for two, firewood included. Book through the village Facebook page—messages are checked by the mayor’s daughter after her shift in Cuenca.

Fill the tank before you leave the A-3; the final twenty kilometres wriggle up CM-215, a road that narrows to a single lane when two tractors meet. Snow chains are sensible between December and February. Mobile coverage is patchy; download maps. Bring cash—no ATM, no card reader in the bar, though they’ll run a tab on a school exercise book if you look honest.

Leave the drone at home. Residents tolerate photographs but dislike buzzing over their rooftops; permission requires a visit to the town hall, open Wednesday mornings only. Dogs roam free after dark; carry a torch.

Last light

Walk back onto the ridge for sunset. The pine sea turns bronze, then ink-blue; the only lights are a scatter of farmsteads and, far beyond, the occasional lorry headlight crawling along the Valencia-Madrid corridor. Somewhere below, dinner pots clatter. Wood smoke rises straight up in the still air. You realise the village hasn’t given you stories to boast about, merely space in which to breathe. That, for now, feels like enough.