Villarejo de la Peñuela

The bakery in Villarejo de la Peñuela opens when the dough rises, not when TripAdvisor says it should. By nine o'clock the single loaf is usually gone, the metal shutter half-closed again, and the only sound is a cockerel that appears to have lost its schedule somewhere on the surrounding 900-metre plateau.

Twenty-three residents—fewer than a Northern line carriage at rush hour—hold the fort against the march of bigger, louder Spain. Their village squats on a limestone ridge forty minutes east of Cuenca, where the map turns from green irrigation circles to beige paramera scrub. Mobile signal arrives in patches, like a visitor who can't quite commit, and the nearest traffic light is 35 km away in Beteta.

Stone, Sky and the Art of Standing Still

Houses the colour of winter wheat follow the slope rather than any street grid. Walls are thigh-thick limestone, roofs the curved terracotta Arabs left behind, and every second doorway still has the iron hinge for a mule tether. Nothing is "restored" in the Farrow-&-Ball sense; facades flake politely, timber browns, and the overall effect is a place that has settled into its own skin.

At the crest sits the parish church, sized more for a parishioner count of seventy than for grandeur. The bell strikes the hours, halves and quarters with the urgency of a retired station-master—accurate, unhurried, slightly surprised anyone is still listening. Inside, the temperature drops six degrees; beeswax and incense linger from last Sunday, when eight people filled the front pews and the priest preached in the direction of more.

Walk fifty paces beyond the last cottage and the plateau shears away. Dry valleys carve north toward the Alto Tajo, and the view stretches clear to the Moncayo massif on blue days. Rock outcrops—peñuelas—jut like broken molars, giving the village its suffix and providing handy lookout stools for vultures. Golden eagles ride the thermals here; if you watch long enough you'll see one fold its wings and plummet after a snake that thought it was safely hidden.

Paths that Expect You to Know Where You're Going

No gift shop sells a glossy walking map because no one has bothered to make one. Instead, centuries-old drove roads radiate: south to the abandoned hamlet of El Horcajo, east along the cattle drift to Fuente de la Orza, north down an old mill track to where the River Tajuña begins as a dribble among reeds. Markers are occasional cairns, or a goat skull nailed to a post—helpful if you like your navigation gothic.

Spring brings the best going: green wheat flickers like a faulty fluorescent, and the air smells of chamomile crushed under boot. By mid-June the ground is hard-baked; footprints print white and disappear under powder. Summer walkers should start at dawn; the paramera offers no shade, and temperatures brush 36 °C. Autumn wraps the hills in ochre and the light turns buttery—photographers call it "God's own filter" and locals simply say hace buen día.

Carry water; the only bar shut its doors when the owner's hip gave out in 2019. If you must eat out, Motilla del Palancar (18 km) does a respectable cordero asado for €14 a quarter, or you can queue with truckers at the Venta de Pilar outside Salmerón for migas fried in garlic and grapes. Villarejo itself has neither shop nor card machine, so stock up in Cuenca before you climb the mountain.

A Calendar Measured in Church Bells and Honey

Festivals here are family WhatsApp threads made flesh. The patronal fiesta lands on the second weekend of August, when emigrants flood back from Madrid, Valencia, even Swindon. Pop-up gazebos appear overnight, a sound system materialises powered by a neighbour's generator, and for thirty-six hours the village swells to 120. There's mass under a plastic canopy, a communal paella that starts at 02:00, and teenagers who haven't met since primary school comparing university notes over warm lager. Monday morning the rubbish lorry trundles up, the last cousins drive away, and by Tuesday lunchtime you can hear the bees again.

April brings the Alcarria honey fair to nearby Brihuega, worth the forty-minute drive if you like your breakfast toast serious. Beekeepers sell thyme, lavender and heather honey in reused Coca-Cola bottles; prices start at €6 for half a kilo and rise with the altitude the bees worked. Villarejo beekeepers set up a trestle table outside the church—look for the hand-written sign that usually blows over before 11 a.m.

Winter is the quiet cheque. Snow arrives a handful of times, lies long enough for photos, then melts into the limestone joints. Nights drop to –8 °C; most houses burn olive prunings in small stoves, and the smell of woodsmoke drifts like a warning. The road from the N-320 is graded promptly—Castilla-La Mancha's council knows the five farming families still here vote—yet carry chains if you're booking January; fog can turn the switchbacks into an arena for articulated lorries.

Getting There, Staying Over, Switching Off

From the UK the usual route is Gatwick to Madrid, then a two-hour AVE train to Cuenca (€34 off-peak). Hire cars sit in the basement of Cuenca's Fernando Zóbel station; allow 55 minutes on the CM-2106 and CM-2105, both well-paved but narrow enough to make passing a tractor an event. Petrol is cheaper at the Repsol outside Tarancón—fill up before the climb.

Accommodation is thin on the ground. One cottage has been let to visitors since 2017: Casa de la Peñuela, two bedrooms, solar hot-water and Wi-Fi that remembers dial-up fondly (€80 a night, three-night minimum). Book through the village Facebook page; responses arrive within a week if the administrator's daughter is visiting. Otherwise base yourself in Cuenca's old town and day-trip—paradors don't get much more dramatic than the one that squats over the Huécar gorge.

Bring cash, a phrasebook and a tolerance for conversational lulls. Evenings revolve around watching the sky fade from apricot to bruise-purple while swifts shriek overhead. You may find yourself counting them out loud; there isn't much competition for noise. That, perhaps, is Villarejo de la Peñuela's only promise: a landscape large enough to make you feel briefly optional, and a clock that ticks only if you remember to wind it.