Cendejas de la Torre

The morning mist lifts at 971 metres to reveal a cluster of stone houses clinging to a rocky outcrop, their terracotta roofs catching the first light. Somewhere below, a tractor coughs into life. Above, a golden eagle rides the thermals. This is Cendejas de la Torre, population twenty-four, where the loudest sound is often the wind combing through juniper and oak.

High-Plateau Living

Altitude changes everything. At this height the meseta’s brutal summer heat softens, nights stay cool even in July, and winter arrives early. Snow can cut the village off for days; locals keep stores of firewood and food as naturally as Londoners keep an Oyster card. The air feels thinner, cleaner. Mobile reception flickers in and out like a faulty torch.

The houses themselves are built for the climate: metre-thick limestone walls, tiny windows facing south-east to snare winter sun, beams of rough-hewn oak blackened by centuries of hearth smoke. Adobe bricks the colour of burnt toast fill gaps where stone ran short. You notice the details only when walking slowly—no one “does” sights here. The entire hamlet is the sight.

Tracks Without Names

Maps show a spider-web of pale lines radiating from the village, old drovers’ routes and mining tracks that have forgotten their purpose. None are way-marked; a Spanish military survey chart or the free Iberian Maps app is worth more than a glossy walking guide. Head east and you drop into a ravine where griffon vultures nest on basalt shelves. Head west and you reach the paramo, an open tableland of broom and thyme that smells like a Provencal market when crushed under boot.

Spring brings the best walking: daytime temperatures hover around 18 °C, wild gladioli puncture the grass, and the only mud is at stream crossings. Autumn is equally gentle, though mornings can start at 3 °C—pack a fleece and a flask. Mid-summer hikes demand a dawn start; by 11 a.m. the sun is a hammer and shade is theoretical. Winter is magnificent and unforgiving: sapphire skies, knife-edge air, and the risk of an unexpected white-out. Unless you carry crampons and know the way back, stay within two kilometres of the village.

The Parish and the Waterstones

The church of San Miguel closes its doors unless someone has remembered to fetch the key from María, who keeps it in a kitchen drawer two doors down. Inside, the nave is the size of a London bus, whitewashed, with a single baroque altar gilded like a jewellery box. On the wall someone has pinned a list of last year’s donations: a goat, two lambs, and enough euros to re-point the bell-tower—hand-written, because printers are for places with shops.

Water has always been fought over up here. A fifteen-minute scramble below the houses lies the Fuente de la Mora, a stone trough fed by a permanent spring. Swallows dip to drink, shepherds still fill plastic jerry-cans, and if you arrive at dusk you may spot wild boar doing the same. Respect the rules: wash downstream, fill bottles upstream, and never, ever empty sunscreen into the water; it kills the algae that keep the trough clear.

Beds, Bread and Where to Find Them

Cendejas itself offers no hotels, no bars, no Sunday-morning baker waving a croissant. The nearest beds are scattered through neighbouring villages within a fifteen-minute drive. Cheapest is Casas Los Trigales in Almadrones—£18 a night per person for a five-bedroom house with open fire and a roof terrace that stares straight at the Sierra de Pela. If you fancy a soak after hiking, Spa & Casa Rural Río Dulce in Aragosa has small thermal pools filled from a natural spring, from £21 pp. All prices plummet outside Spanish school holidays; owners often waive the weekend two-night minimum if you phone instead of booking online.

For food, drive ten kilometres to Jadraque where Panadería Hermanos Prieto sells crusty barra loaves at €0.90 and a fierce Manchego that crumbles like Derbyshire cheddar. Meat comes from Carnicería Julián: order cordero lechal (milk-fed lamb) a day ahead; it arrives trimmed ready for the village clay oven. Vegetarians should stock up in Guadalajara before heading into the hills—local menus think “vegetarian” means ham is picked out later.

When the Village Comes Home

Each August the population swells to maybe a hundred. Former neighbours who left for Madrid or Zaragoza return, towing grandchildren and cooler boxes. The fiesta is low-key even by Spanish standards: Saturday evening mass with guitar accompaniment, a procession that lasts twenty minutes, then communal bowls of caldereta (lamb stew) served on folding tables in the square. Visitors are welcome to queue; bring your own bowl and spoon, donate what you like into the enamel pot marked “costas.” Fireworks are dispensed with because dogs outnumber humans and no one wants to traumatise the livestock. By Tuesday the last car disappears down the hill and the village exhales back into silence.

Getting There, Getting Out

Fly to Madrid-Barajas from Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester or Edinburgh; BA, Iberia, Ryanair and easyJet all run direct. Hire cars sit in the basement of Terminal 1; allow ninety minutes for the paperwork at peak times. Take the A-2 towards Barcelona, peel off at junction 55, then follow the CM-100 through Jadraque. The final seven kilometres are paved but narrow; meeting a tractor means one of you reverses to the nearest passing place. In winter carry snow chains even if the forecast claims “light frost”—weather changes fast at altitude. There is no petrol station closer than Guadalajara; fill the tank before the mountains.

Public transport is fiction. A weekday bus reaches Jadraque from Guadalajara at 13:45; it turns around twenty minutes later, which leaves you an eight-kilometre uphill walk with 350 metres of climb. Taxis from Guadalajara bus station cost €70 if booked in advance—worth considering for departure day when legs are sore and boots muddy.

The Honest Verdict

Cendejas de la Torre will never feature on a postcard carousel. It offers no gift shops, no guided tours, no Instagram-friendly neon signs. What it does offer is a yardstick: an hour spent listening to absolute silence, a night sky so dark you can read the Milky Way, and the realisation that twenty-four people have chosen to keep the lights on at nearly a thousand metres. Come for that, or stay on the motorway. Just remember to bring a map, a coat, and enough petrol to get back down.