Campisábalos

The stone walls of the church of San Bartolomé have been listening to the same north wind for 900 years. At dawn, when the temperature is still brushing freezing even in May, that wind carries nothing but the clack of a single shepherd’s staff and the soft complaint of the wooden balcony doors. Sixty-seven residents, one bar, zero souvenir stalls: Campisábalos keeps the ledger of modern tourism firmly in the red.

Drive up from the A-2 at Sigüenza and the meseta folds into sudden hills. The last 30 km are an empty plateau of wheat and wind turbines; phone signal dies just before the road starts to climb. At 1,200 m the air thins, the stone turns greyer, and junipers twist themselves into bonsai sculptures. The village appears only after the final bend—no dramatic reveal, just a ridge of slate roofs and the square Romanesque tower that has doubled as a way-mark since the twelfth century.

Inside the church, the morning light is blunt and white. Half-point arches rest on recycled Roman columns; their capitals show Daniel in the lions’ den, leaves that look like oak, and a basilisk sticking out its tongue. The carving is provincial but confident—someone here once knew exactly how stone should breathe. No ticket desk, no rope barrier; drop a euro in the box and the sacristan will unlock the door if he’s not already outside rolling a cigarette.

Silence is the currency. Walk fifty paces beyond the last house and you are inside the Sierra de Pela Natural Interest Area. Way-marked paths exist, but the paint blisters quickly under the altitude sun. A sensible circuit threads south-east through the juniper carpet towards the ruins of an old snow-well, used until the 1950s to store ice for Toledo hospitals. The climb is gentle, the view anything but: on a clear day you can trace the outline of the Moncayo massif 120 km away. Turn 180 degrees and the land falls away into the infant Tagus, a stripe of silver cotton in the haze.

Come prepared. The village sits above the snow-line; winter roads are gritted late, sometimes never. A Saturday night in January can drop to –12 °C; pipes freeze, the hostal’s heating runs on pellets and needs 30 minutes’ notice. Summer compensates with 25 °C maxima, but night-time still demands a fleece. The meteorological station at nearby Zafrilla lists Campisábalos as the coldest inhabited place in Castilla–La Mancha—statistics that read dryly in a report feel surprisingly brisk when the wind rattles your bedroom shutters at three in the morning.

There is only one place to eat: Bar-Restaurante El Mensario, half-way along the single street. It opens at seven for coffee and churros, closes at nine sharp, and does not take cards. Lamb is roasted in the same wood-fired oven used for the baker’s weekly bread; ask for a medio asado if two kilos feels excessive. The house red comes from Valdejalón and costs eight euros a litre—drinkable, honest, tasting faintly of garnacha and tin. On Sundays the owner’s wife makes rice pudding scented with lemon peel; arrive after 14:30 and you will be offered the remains whether you ordered or not.

Rooms are at the Hostal Las Truchas, eight doubles above the trout river that gives the place its name. Furniture is pine, Wi-Fi is theoretical, and the back balconies overlook a meadow where cows wear bells the size of teacups. Weekends fill with baptisms and weddings; book before you leave the motorway services because cancellation policies are, politely, medieval. Price: 55 € double, breakfast 6 € extra—strong coffee, freshly squeezed orange juice and a slab of toasted village bread rubbed with tomato and garlic.

What you will not find: gift shops, cash machine, nightly folklore, taxis, public transport. The last bus left in 1994. Mobile coverage improves if you stand on the church steps and face north-east; WhatsApp voice notes will still sound like they were recorded in a sock. Bring cash, a paper map, and enough petrol to retreat to Sigüenza or Medinaceli if the weather snaps shut.

The upside is proportionate. Night skies register a Bortle class of 2—amateur astronomers set up tripods in the cemetery and see the Andromeda Galaxy with bare eyes. In May, lavender Lavandula stoechas turns the surrounding pastures purple; bee-eaters migrate through, flashing emerald wings against ochre earth. Photographers get the best stone textures at 08:00 when the sun side-lights the church portal; by 10:30 the glare flattens everything into postcard anonymity.

Leave time to simply stand still. The village soundtrack is wind, distant cowbells, and the click of your own coat zip. Half an hour of it recalibrates the urban pulse more effectively than any spa playlist. Locals, used to visitors who arrive speaking school-day Spanish and leave in silence, will nod from doorways but rarely interrupt. The mayor—also the baker—once summed up the social code for a British cyclist: “We don’t count people; we count winters survived.”

If you must timetable, aim for the weekend closest to 24 August. The fiesta of San Bartolomés hauls exiles back from Guadalajara and Madrid; the population quadruples, the bar runs a beer tap on the street, and someone will press a plate of migas—fried breadcrumbs with chorizo—into your hands. By the 26th the village has exhaled again, wheelie-bins stand half empty, and the wind resumes its monologue.

Drive away in daylight. The descent twists through holm-oak scrub and sudden drops; night mists hide potholes and the occasional wandering cow. In the mirror Campisábalos shrinks to a single orange rectangle—the hostal landing light—then nothing. Back on the A-2 the lorries heading for Madrid sound like a different century. They are; you have just spent 24 hours in an earlier draft of Spain, one that forgot to update the footnotes.