La Herrera

The Morning Bell Rings at Nine

The church bell strikes once, twice, then carries on counting to nine. Nobody hurries. An elderly man shuffles across the square with yesterday's newspaper tucked beneath his arm. A woman waters geraniums on her balcony, letting the excess spill onto the cracked pavement below. This is La Herrera on an ordinary Tuesday, 307 souls scattered across steep lanes that climb from the wheat plains towards the Sierra de Alcaraz.

At 710 metres above sea level, the village sits precisely where Castilla-La Mancha's vast agricultural plateau begins buckling into proper mountains. The transition is immediate. Look east and you'll see flat cereal fields stretching beyond the horizon. Turn west and olive groves tilt upwards, eventually giving way to proper pine forest. It's geography you can read with your feet: every street gains altitude, every breath comes slightly thinner than the last.

What Passes for Architecture Here

The parish church dominates the skyline, though "dominates" feels grandiose for a building that would fit inside a London branch of Waitrose. Constructed from the same honey-coloured stone as every other building, it sports a modest bell tower and wooden doors that close with medieval certainty. Inside, the walls bear witness to centuries of candle smoke and the occasional over-zealous restoration.

Surrounding streets reveal the usual Castilian mixture: half the houses maintain their original wooden doors and iron balconies, painted in colours that range from ox-blood red to municipal green. The rest sport aluminium windows and satellite dishes that point towards Madrid's television towers. Nobody's fussed about heritage status. People live here, they don't curate it.

Wander upwards and the lanes narrow to single-file width. Stone walls replace rendered façades. You'll pass the former school, closed since 1998 when the last three pupils graduated, and the bakery that now operates from someone's garage on Saturday mornings. The smell hits first: yeast and olive wood smoke drifting from an oven built in 1953.

Eating What the Land Dictates

Food arrives according to season and whatever's moving in the surrounding hills. Winter means gazpacho manchego, though this bears no relation to the chilled tomato soup British supermarkets sell. It's a hearty stew of game bird, rabbit or whatever the local hunters bring home, thickened with flatbread and spiced with pimentón. Portions are enormous because they were designed for men who'd spent eight hours ploughing clay soil in January temperatures.

Spring brings wild asparagus gathered from roadside ditches and eggs collected from hens that scratch beneath olive trees. Summer means migas: breadcrumbs fried in olive oil with garlic and grapes, eaten at 3pm when the heat makes anything heavier impossible. Autumn belongs to mushrooms, though you'll need a local guide since the difference between delicious and deadly here can be microscopic.

The village bar opens at 7am for coffee and closes whenever the owner feels like it. There's no menu. Ask what's available and you'll get whatever María cooked that morning. Expect to pay €8-12 for three courses, including wine that arrives in a chipped glass bottle with no label. They've been refilling it from the local cooperative for three decades.

Walking it Off (or Not)

The GR-130 long-distance footpath passes within two kilometres of La Herrera, though you'd never know it. No signposts point the way, no souvenir shops sell walking poles. The path proper follows ancient drove roads used for moving sheep between summer and winter pastures. These days you're more likely to encounter a farmer on a quad bike checking his almond trees.

Local walking requires no special equipment beyond sensible shoes and water. Head south along the track past the cemetery and you'll reach the abandoned cortijo of Los Llanos within forty minutes. Its roof collapsed in 1992 but the stone walls remain, home to nesting storks and the occasional wandering goat. Continue another hour and you'll hit the river Chícamo, usually dry between June and September but forming green pools where frogs chorus deafeningly after rain.

The serious hiking lies westwards, where proper mountains rise to 1,847 metres at the Sierra de Alcaraz's highest point. But that's tomorrow's adventure. Today's exercise involves walking to the top of the village where the road simply stops, replaced by a farm track that climbs towards the communication masts visible on every horizon.

When the Village Remembers it's Spanish

Festivals punctuate agricultural routine with the precision of a medieval calendar. January brings San Antón, when locals light bonfires in the main square and stand close enough to singe their eyebrows. The priest blesses animals, which means dogs on leads, sheep in trailers and one confused chicken carried by a small child.

Semana Santa arrives with subdued ceremony. The Thursday evening procession involves thirty people maximum, carrying a platform bearing the Virgin through streets barely wider than the bearers' shoulders. The band consists of two trumpet players and a drummer who learnt his craft in the village's now-defunct music school. It finishes by 10pm because everyone's got work tomorrow.

August transforms everything. The population quadruples as former residents return from Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. Suddenly the square hosts proper orchestras, the bakery operates fourteen hours daily, and teenagers who've never met conduct intense romances lasting exactly nine days. Then September arrives and the village exhales, returning to its normal rhythm of agricultural time and early nights.

Getting Here, Staying Here, Leaving Here

Albacete lies 90 minutes away by car, though "away" feels relative when you're navigating roads that switchback through proper mountains. Take the A-30 towards Murcia then follow signs for Alcaraz, eventually turning onto the CM-412. The final twenty minutes involve single-track roads where meeting a tractor means reversing fifty metres to the nearest passing place. Night driving requires full beam and steady nerves.

Accommodation options remain limited. There's one casa rural sleeping six, converted from the former doctor's surgery. It costs €80 per night minimum and you'll need to bring your own food since nobody delivers takeaway pizza to postcodes beginning with 02316. Alternative bases include Alcaraz (25 minutes) or the superior facilities at Elche de la Sierra, though staying elsewhere misses the point entirely.

The nearest petrol station closes at 8pm sharp and doesn't open Sundays. The village shop stocks UHT milk, tinned tuna and not much else. Mobile phone signal varies according to weather, provider and whether you're standing beneath the right tree. This isn't remoteness for instagram likes. It's simply how rural Spain functions when tourism hasn't arrived to smooth the edges.

Come in April when the plains glow green with young wheat and almond blossom froths across every hillside. Or choose October, when the heat subsides and mushroom hunters disappear into oak forests with the focused intensity of truffle pigs. Avoid August unless you enjoy sharing your personal space with several hundred temporary residents and their amplified music preferences.

Leave before dawn at least once. Stand in the main square and watch the sky shift from black to bruised purple to proper blue, while the church bell counts out time that hasn't changed in centuries. Then drive away slowly, because La Herrera doesn't do rushed goodbyes and neither should you.