Las Valeras

The grain lorry takes the bend at full throttle, engine roaring against the gradient. Wheat chaff blows from its trailer like bronze confetti across the CM-412, the only paved thread that bothers to climb this high. At 870 metres, Las Valeras appears suddenly: a tight cluster of whitewashed cubes stamped onto the ridge, television aerials bristling above roofs that still slope to shed winter snow. No cathedral spire, no castle keep—just the blunt, square tower of the parish church keeping watch over cereal fields that roll away to every horizon.

This is Castilla-La Mancha stripped of windmills and Don Quijote souvenirs. The village sits exactly where the southern plateau begins to shrug itself into the Serranía de Cuenca, a geographical afterthought that turned out to be fertile enough to keep people here for eight uninterrupted centuries. The result is a place that feels neither dramatic nor neglected, simply accustomed to its own altitude and rhythm.

A Parish, a Bar, and a Bread Oven

Start in the plaza, barely the size of a tennis court, where the church doors stand open from seven until eleven each morning. Inside, the air carries cold stone and candle wax; the single nave is plastered thick enough to muffle the tractor noise drifting up from the harvest. Look for the fifteenth-century polychrome of Saint Blaise—throat complaints remain the speciality of the local doctor, and the saint still gets his annual offering of beeswax candles on 3 February.

Opposite, Bar La Parada does what village bars here have always done: coffee before fieldwork, brandy after funerals, and a three-course menú del día for €11 that begins with garlic soup and ends with something involving cinnamon. The owner, Jesús, will lend you the key to the bread museum—really a single room behind the 1850 wood-fired oven—if you ask between nine and ten, before the dough goes in for the weekend hogazas. Admission is free; the smell is free anyway.

From the bar, Calle de la Cruz climbs past houses whose lower storeys still have feeding troughs built into the stonework. Donkeys have been replaced by Seat Ibizas, yet the troughs make handy flowerboxes for geraniums that survive the altitude thanks to merciless Castilian sun. At the top, a crumbling stone cross marks the edge of the medieval core; beyond it, the streets lose their cobbles and the twenty-first century begins with a row of semi-detached houses painted in colours that never quite dry: pistachio, peach, sun-bleached lavender.

Walking the Boundary Stones

The surrounding término municipal covers 72 square kilometres, almost all of it given over to wheat, barley, and olives. Footpaths are signed in the half-hearted way of places that assume everyone already knows the way. Pick up the leaflet—Spanish only—from the ayuntamiento office (open Tuesday and Thursday mornings) and follow the yellow dashes of the Ruta de los Neveros, a nine-kilometre loop that dips into two shallow valleys before regaining the ridge.

The trail passes three neveros, eighteen-century ice houses sunk into the north slope. Built from dry stone, they look like oversized bee skeps; farmers lowered winter snow on ropes, compressed it tight, then sold the blocks in Cuenca come July. Today the interiors echo with swallow wings, but the temperature still drops a good five degrees the moment you step inside. Spring brings red admiral butterflies to the entrance, drunk on the sudden chill.

Midway, the path skirts the Cerro de la Horca, whose summit bristles with amateur radio masts. From here you can see the village reservoir, a clay-lined pool that shrinks to a puddle by late August. Farmers time their barley sowing to the first autumn rains—usually the feast of Saint Michael, 29 September—and complain loudly when the clouds arrive early and rot the seed. Conversation here is still meteorological, not political.

What Arrives in the Lorry Leaves in the Lorry

Las Valeras produces grain, olive oil, and little else. The weekly market vanished in 2008; the nearest supermarket is 28 kilometres away in Motilla del Palancar. What this means for visitors is simple: eat what the village eats, when it eats it. In October that translates to gazpacho pastor, a shepherd’s stew of rabbit, flatbread, and wild marjoram that has nothing to do with the chilled tomato soup Brits know. Order it at Casa Torcuato on Plaza Primero de Mayo; they only make six portions a day, served at exactly two thirty.

Mushroom season—October again—brings weekend mycologists from Valencia armed with wicker baskets and more confidence than knowledge. Locals roll their eyes at the sight of a Seat León parked sideways across a barley track. If you plan to forage, hire José María, the retired biology teacher, for €25 an hour; he’ll show you níscalo from tóxica and keeps a discreet eye on the Civil Guard patrol that fines over-zealous pickers. A permit costs €8 from the regional website, printed and filled in before you leave the UK; they check.

Sleeping Above the Cloud

Night-time temperatures drop ten degrees below the Cuenca plain, so accommodation tends to be stone-walled and wood-heated, not air-conditioned and tiled. La Quinta del Abuelo Félix, five minutes’ drive west of the centre, occupies a 1920 grain store remodelled with underfloor heating and Wi-Fi that falters whenever the mist rolls in. Doubles from €85 including a breakfast of local honey, tortas de aceite, and coffee strong enough to anchor a spoon. The cottage sleeps four; bring slippers—the original clay tiles suck heat from bare feet.

For tighter budgets, Casa Riansares on Calle Ancha offers two rooms above the village’s only bookshop. The owner, Pepi, speaks school-English learned during a year as an au pair in Norwich and will lend you a hiking pole if you promise not to spear the irrigation hoses that snake across the olive groves. Rates start at €45 with shared bathroom; dinner is an extra €12 if you warn her before noon.

When to Come, When to Leave

May turns the wheat emerald and the temperature hovers around 22 °C—perfect for walking before the sun climbs above the sierra. By July the mercury touches 35 °C at midday and the fields bleach to platinum; the village empties as families migrate to the coast, leaving one bar open and a silence broken only by the combine harvesters that work through the night. August fiestas bring fireworks and temporary beer tents, but also traffic jams of returning emigrants who double the population for four days and reserve every table in advance.

Winter is sharp. Snow arrives overnight, closes the CM-412 for hours, and turns the plaza into an improvised sled run using olive-wood trays. Photographers love it; the elderly population less so. If you do come between December and February, carry snow chains and a thermos. The reward is a sky so clear that Orion seems close enough to snag on the church tower.

Leave before you start recognising every dog by name. Las Valeras offers a glimpse of interior Spain that package tours skipped, but it survives precisely because it is not a destination. The grain lorry will still take the bend tomorrow, the bread oven will still fire at dawn, and the wheat will still meet the sky at 870 metres—whether you are there to watch or not.