Alcolea del Pinar

The first thing you notice is the smell of pines drifting through the car window while the engine is still running. Then the altitude: 1,215 m, high enough to make your ears pop if you’ve come straight from Madrid’s airport. Most Britons thunder along the A-2 here intent on reaching Valencia or Barcelona before nightfall; the turning to Alcolea del Pinar is a gentle left-hander signed only with a brown panel that looks as if it belongs to a service area. Take it and the motorway roar drops away within 200 m, replaced by the hush of a forest village whose permanent population could fit inside a Cross-Channel ferry.

Stone, snow and siesta

The houses are low, thick-walled and roofed with curved Arab tiles designed for snow loads rather than sunshade. That tells you everything about the climate: winter arrives in November and lingers until Easter, bringing weeks when the thermometer never rises above 6 °C and the wind whipping across the Meseta makes it feel like −2 °C. Summer, by contrast, is a revelation. At this height August nights dip to 14 °C; you will still want a jumper after ten o’clock, something no coastal resort can offer.

The centre is a single T-junction presided over by the parish church of San Juan Bautista, its stone tower patched after Civil-War shell-holes. Walk fifty paces in any direction and you are on a dirt track among Scots pines. The village soundtrack is sparse: a tractor heading for the fields, a dog announcing the postman’s van, the wooden clack of dominoes outside Bar Escolano at 11 a.m. sharp. After 9 p.m. the score drops to zero; even the church bell seems to whisper so as not to wake the elderly.

What actually happens here

Hiking is the honest draw. Three way-marked paths leave from the plaza: the shortest (5 km, 150 m ascent) loops through pine resin-collecting sites to a sandstone bluff that gives a hawk’s view over the A-2 and, beyond it, the cereal ocean of La Mancha. A longer circuit (12 km) climbs to the ruins of a 1930s snow depot where ice was once packed for transport to Madrid’s fish markets; the stone ice-pits are still intact, now filled with wild crocus in April rather than compacted snow. Both routes are way-marked but carry the free leaflet from the ayuntamiento—mobile coverage is patchy on Vodafone and Three, and the forest lanes all look identical once the mist rolls in.

If you prefer two wheels, a green-graded MTB track follows the abandoned railway that once carried pine logs to Guadalajara. Hire bikes are not available; bring your own or rent in Sigüenza (25 km) where the tourist office has hybrids for €18 a day. Road cyclists use the A-2 shoulder to rack up altitude training—Lotto-Soudal stayed in nearby Medinaceli last winter—though you will be sharing the hard shoulder with lorries doing 100 km/h, so it is not a family outing.

Eating on mountain time

Kitchens shut early and without apology. Last hot food orders are taken at 21:00 in Bar Escolano and 20:30 in Paleto’s, the wood-fired-pizza place that occupies the former village petrol station. The local T-bone, chuletón, is sized for two and arrives bleeding unless you specify bien hecho; chips come separately, brought to the table in their own terracotta dish. If you are self-catering the bakery opens at 07:30 and usually sells out of tortilla by 09:00; grab a wedge while you queue for coffee—it is served lukewarm, deliberately, and costs €1.60 with a baguette of crusty pan de pueblo. For picnics buy a small wheel of queso de oveja and a jar of mountain honey; both travel well in a rucksack and survive a day’s hike without refrigeration.

Sunday is a full shutdown. No bread, no beer, no cash machine—there never was an ATM and the nearest is inside a filling station 22 km east on the motorway. Fill the tank on Saturday evening; the Guardia-Civil traffic post on the edge of the village is famous for breath-testing drivers at 08:00 Sunday mass.

When to turn up—and when to drive on

April–May and mid-September to early November give the best balance of daylight, temperature and open businesses. Spring brings carpets of narcisos and the first setas; autumn is mushroom season and the only time you will need to book a table ahead, not because of tourist hordes but because half of Zaragoza drives up for the weekend mycological fix. Winter can be spectacular after snow, but the CM-100 access road is cleared only when staff reach the depot—sometimes not until lunchtime. Chains are compulsory equipment from 1 November; the car-hire desk at Madrid will charge €60 for the season if you mention Soria or Guadalajara provinces.

August fiestas (around the 15th) are low-key even by rural Spanish standards: one evening of fireworks, two nights of verbenas in the plaza, and endless calimocho served from cool boxes. It is fun if you fancy dancing with the village toddlers until 02:00; it is hell if you want an early night, because the sound system points straight at the only guest-house windows.

A night or a pit-stop?

Accommodation is limited to six rooms above the former school (€55 B&B, Wi-Fi that actually works). Most travellers treat Alcolea as a leg-stretch: 90 minutes from Madrid airport, clean public toilets beside the church, a bar that understands café con leche decaf and a pine-scented walk to blow away the jet-lag. Stay overnight only if you are happy to self-cater after 9 p.m., entertain yourself with star-gazing, and rise early enough to buy tortilla before it disappears. Drive on if you need a choice of restaurants, a cashpoint, or anything open after the football scores come in.

Either way, next time the Sat-Nav claims “continue 312 km to Valencia,” consider clicking left instead. You will still reach the coast by nightfall, but with pine resin on your shoes and a lungs-full of air the Low Countries cannot bottle.