Yémeda

The church bell still rings at noon, though only seventeen people remain to hear it. At 860 metres above sea level, Yémeda floats above the cereal plains of Castilla-La Mancha like a stone boat that's lost most of its crew. The air up here carries a different weight—thinner, cleaner, sharp enough to make London lungs notice the difference within minutes.

The Arithmetic of Absence

Walking Yémeda's main street takes precisely four minutes, assuming you pause to read the faded ceramic street sign. Calle Real, it's called, though there's nothing particularly royal about the crumbling stone houses with their Arabic tiles slipping southwards. Each doorway tells the same story: wooden doors weathered to silver-grey, iron knockers shaped like hands, and behind them, silence thick as winter soup.

The mathematics is brutal. Seventeen residents, perhaps twenty houses still inhabited, another forty standing empty. Their windows stare out like eye sockets in a skull, yet somehow the village refuses to feel morbid. Instead, there's a stubborn dignity here, the sort that comes from surviving decades of rural exodus while neighbouring hamlets surrendered entirely to the earth.

Summer brings a temporary inflation. Former residents return for the fiesta patronal in August, swelling numbers to perhaps sixty. They arrive in dusty Renaults and ageing Seats, unpacking folding chairs and polystyrene cool boxes filled with lamb and Manchego cheese. For three days, the plaza fills with voices that haven't echoed here since childhood, then everyone leaves again, and the village exhales back to its essential self.

Walking the Empty Quarter

The real map of Yémeda exists outside its boundaries, etched into the dry stone walls that ribbon across the paramera. These ancient paths, built by hands that never knew tractors, connect to hamlets whose names read like incantations: Villar del Humo, Olivares de Júcar, Garcimolina. Walking them requires preparation—water, sun protection, and crucially, a downloaded GPS track. The regional government installed some wooden waymarks five years ago; most have since become firewood.

Morning walks deliver the best rewards. By 7 am, the sun already has teeth, but the thermometer reads a civilised eighteen degrees. Griffon vultures start their thermal commute above the limestone ridges, while below, the cereal fields create a golden patchwork that would make a Cotswolds farmer weep with envy. The difference? These fields feed nobody locally. Their wheat travels sixty kilometres to mills in Cuenca, their profit flows to agricultural conglomerates in Madrid.

Afternoon hiking proves less sensible. Between 2 pm and 5 pm, the siesta hours extend beyond human custom into meteorological fact. Temperatures regularly touch forty degrees from June to August. The stones radiate heat like storage heaters in reverse, and even the lizards seek shade. One August afternoon, a German tourist required helicopter evacuation after attempting a six-kilometre circuit at 3 pm. The mountain rescue team located him via mobile phone, slumped beneath a juniper tree, dehydrated and apologetic.

The Gastronomy of Self-Reliance

Nobody opens a restaurant in Yémeda. The economics simply don't compute when your potential customer base numbers seventeen, plus whatever stray hikers appear. Instead, food here follows medieval rhythms: what you can't grow, you barter; what you can't barter, you do without.

The village's last proper shop closed in 1998. Today's residents drive thirty-five kilometres to Cuenca for provisions, or maintain vegetable gardens that would shame most British allotments. Tomatoes the size of cricket balls, peppers that actually taste of pepper, and beans that require overnight soaking because they've never met industrial water.

If you're staying overnight—and frankly, why else would you be here?—bring supplies. The nearest supermarket sits in Beteta, twenty-three kilometres away along a road that demands full attention and preferably a vehicle with decent suspension. Stock up on chorizo from the butcher there; it's made with pork from pigs that lived considerably better lives than their British supermarket cousins. Pair it with local Manchego, the proper stuff aged in mountain caves, not the pre-grated travesty sold in UK supermarkets.

Winter's Sharp Edge

November transforms Yémeda entirely. The sun still shines—this is Spain, after all—but now it illuminates frost rather than dust. Temperatures drop to minus eight most nights, and the limestone houses, built for summer cool, become refrigerators with doorways. Heating costs bankrupt whatever economy remains; most residents live in single heated rooms, migrating through their houses like seasonal nomads.

Snow arrives properly perhaps twice each winter. When it does, the village becomes accessible only via the Nacimiento road from Cuenca, and even that requires chains. The other access routes—glorified cart tracks really—become impassable for anything without four-wheel drive and a farmer's disregard for bodywork. Electricity cables snap under the weight of ice. Mobile phone reception, already patchy, disappears entirely for days.

Yet winter reveals the village's true character. Those seventeen residents become seventeen links in a human chain. Wood gets chopped for elderly neighbours, generators get shared, and nobody eats alone unless they specifically choose to. It's community enforced by geography and weather, the sort that Britain lost sometime around the invention of central heating.

Practical Geography

Reaching Yémeda requires commitment. From London, fly to Madrid—Barajas handles the routes, though Valencia works too if you fancy a longer drive. Hire cars need to be robust; the final eighteen kilometres from the CM-2106 to Yémeda would shame most British B-roads. Budget forty-five minutes from Cuenca, longer if you've acclimatised to Spanish driving speeds.

Accommodation presents the real challenge. The village itself offers nothing commercial, unless you count María's spare room, which she occasionally rents to trustworthy hikers for thirty euros per night. Facilities run to a comfortable bed, bathroom shared with María's visiting grandchildren, and breakfast featuring eggs from genuinely free-range chickens. Book by calling the number painted on her front door—no website, no online booking, no card payments.

Alternatives cluster in Beteta, twenty-three kilometres away. The Hotel Spa Villa de Beteta occupies a restored manor house with rates from €85 per night. Their restaurant serves proper local cooking—try the gazpacho manchego, completely unrelated to the cold tomato soup British restaurants mislabel. For tighter budgets, Casa Rural La Huerta charges €45 for a double room, though you'll need Spanish to negotiate the booking.

Come prepared, come curious, and abandon any notion of ticking off attractions. Yémeda offers something increasingly rare in Europe: the sound of absolute silence, broken only by church bells marking time for seventeen people who refused to leave.