Real de San Vicente (El)

The church bell tolls twice at 14:37, a sound swallowed almost immediately by granite walls and the scent of wet slate. By 14:40 the only till still open in El Real de San Vicente belongs to the bakery opposite the stone tower of San Vicente Mártir, and even that shuts once the last cuchifrito sandwich is gone. Drivers who pull off the A-5 for fuel and a stretch often stay just long enough to finish the sandwich before gunning back to the motorway, unaware that the tangle of lanes behind the church climbs to 800 m and keeps climbing until the oak canopy blocks every trace of the 21st century.

The vertical village

Houses here were built shoulder-to-shoulder for warmth, their back walls quarried straight from the Sierra de San Vicente. A five-minute wander from the main road becomes a calf-deep ascent on polished cobbles; locals count the gradient in cuestas serias, not degrees. Granite doorways are shoulder-high – centuries of foot traffic have eroded the street lower than the threshold – and green-painted balconies sag just enough to suggest they have seen every January frost since the Catholic Monarchs parcelled out these slopes. Look up and you will see the same stone palette repeated against sky, interrupted only by chestnut trees that turn the lanes bronze by mid-October.

The altitude matters. Even in May the wind arriving over the Gredos carries a nip that makes a fleece welcome at midday, while August nights drop to 14 °C, a blessed contrast to Toledo's cauldron 90 km east. That weather divide explains why Madrileño families own second casas here: they sit empty most of the year, open for three weeks when the plateau below is unbearable, then close again before the school run. The result is a population that swells from 500 to 2 000 for a fortnight and then drains away, leaving the village to its 975 official residents and a silence loud enough to hear the Tiétar valley goats.

Oak, chestnut, granite

Ask for a walking map in the ayuntamiento and you will be handed a photocopied A4 sheet dated 2013. It is more accurate than the online GPX files, which were drawn by weekend bikers who prefer straight lines to contours. The Ruta de los Castañares starts between houses 22 and 24 on Calle del Pino, marked by a hand-painted tile that warns "Respete la tranquillidad del bosque". From there a stony track climbs 300 m through sweet-chestnut coppice to a col at 1 180 m; in late October the ground is carpeted with split husks and the air smells of tannin and woodsmoke. Locals arrive with supermarket carrier bags, fill them in twenty minutes, and reappear in the bakery the next morning asking the owner to roast their harvest in her bread oven.

Further west the paths narrow to single-file between holm-oak and quejigo; their acorns once fed the cerdo ibérico that still appears on winter menus as cuchifrito, confit pork that collapses at the touch of a fork. Casa Wimba will serve a half-ración if you ask: enough to understand the dish without feeling you have swallowed half a pig. Vegetarians survive on sopa de ajo, a Castilian garlic broth that tastes like liquid comfort provided you remember to request "sin caldo de jamón". Wash it down with a caña of La Mancha blonde ale – yes, craft beer has reached the sierra – then walk it off on the Boulder Circuit, a 4 km loop past granite outcrops where Spanish climbers rehearse moves chalked in white handprints.

Roads, petrol, and Monday mornings

The Repsol on the CM-5005 locks its pumps at 14:00 on Saturday and stays shut all Sunday; run the tank low and your weekend becomes longer than planned. Monday is closure day for the bakery, both restaurants, and any hope of a hot meal, so time your visit Tuesday to Sunday. Public transport is theoretical: one school bus leaves Talavera at 07:10 and returns at 14:30, timed for pupils not pilgrims. Without wheels you are marooned, which is precisely why the few British motor-homers who discover the free área de descanso beside the Alberche tributary tend to stay three nights instead of one, filling water tanks and reading paperbacks while black kites wheel overhead.

If you do drive, ignore the sat-nav shortcut via the CM-415: the asphalt narrows to a single-track shelf with 200 m drops and no barrier. Stay on the CM-4000 to Talavera, turn south on the CM-5005, and arrive with nerves intact. The last 18 km are still sinuous enough to keep coach parties away, which suits the village and its wildlife.

When the mountain joins the fiesta

Year-round silence makes the January fiesta feel slightly surreal. Around the 22nd the village resurrects an 18th-century drum procession for San Vicente Mártir: men in wool capes beat a slow rhythm that bounces off stone, followed by a statue of the saint carried shoulder-high despite the gradient. Because the patron's day falls in deepest winter, many events are shifted to the first mild weekend; even so, night temperatures can touch –5 °C. Bring a down jacket and you will have the unusual experience of a Spanish street party where mulled wine is handed out free, not sold from a plastic barrel.

Summer action is more haphazard. August brings verbenas – open-air dances – staged on the concrete frontón. The playlist is 40 % reggaeton, 40 % 90s Europop, 20 % curious fascination with The Animals' "House of the Rising Sun". Foreign visitors are welcome, though the crowd is mostly second-homeowners reliving teenage summers and arguing over whose turn it is to buy the sherry bucket.

Beds, bases, and goodbyes

There are no hotels. Accommodation is the 24-bed Albergue Juvenil De la Fuente Fría, a former school refurbished into spotless dorms with radiator heating that actually works (€18 including sheets). Couples after privacy choose the two attic doubles, booked by emailing the council and collecting the key from the baker. Hot water is solar-boosted; on cloudy days showers are brief but adequate. Check-out is 09:00 sharp because the caretaker drives to Toledo for the market.

El Real de San Vicente will never headline a Spanish itinerary, and that is its appeal. It functions as a decompression chamber between the capital's roar and the Extremadura plains, a place where geography forces you to slow down to walking pace and the loudest noise at midnight is the church clock striking a single note. Come for chestnut season, stay long enough to walk one ridge, and leave before Monday morning turns even the petrol station into a memory.