Paredes de Sigüenza

The church bell strikes noon, yet nobody appears. A single swallow cuts across the stone tower, the only movement in a village where 55 residents outnumber the daily visitors by at least three to one. At 1,050 m above sea level, Paredes de Sigüenza feels closer to the sky than to the nearest supermarket – and that, rather than any souvenir shop, is the point.

Stone, Adobe and the Sound of Wind

Adobe walls the colour of toasted almonds shoulder against grey granite, a building recipe worked out centuries ago to blunt the knife-edge wind that arrives straight from the Meseta. Most houses still carry the original wooden doors, iron studs pock-marked by hail. Peer through the forged bars of a ground-floor window and you may find a tractor parked in what was once the family stable; animals downstairs, humans above, the old Castilian pact against winter cold.

There is no ticket office, no interpretation board, no café terrace with wicker chairs. Instead you get an open-air lesson in rural architecture: mampostería walls thick enough to sit on, tiny windows set deep like squinting eyes, and rooflines that sag just enough to prove authenticity. Walk the two parallel streets and the single cross-lane in twenty minutes, then walk them again at dusk when the stone turns copper and you will notice joints and lintels you missed the first time.

The fifteenth-century parish church keeps its tower door locked unless the priest is expected, but the stone grooves around the portal still show where shepherds sharpened their knives while waiting for Mass. Step inside when it is open and the temperature drops five degrees; the interior smells of wax and mountain thyme left on the altar by the last wedding party.

Walking into Empty Country

Within five minutes of the last house the tarmac gives way to a dirt track that plunges between banks of rock-rose and lavender. This is the Cañada Real Leonesa, a drove road older than any map, still used by a handful of farmers to move sheep between winter pastures and the high summer braña. Follow it south-east for an hour and you reach the edge of the Henares gorge, a sudden tear in the plateau where griffon vultures ride thermals at eye level. Binoculars are worth the extra weight: golden eagles nest on the far cliff, and the difference between a vulture and an eagle is easier to spot when you are not peering through a coach window.

Paths are unsigned but obvious – head for the horizon and you will eventually bump into a stone wall or an abandoned threshing circle. Mobile reception vanishes after the first ridge, so screenshot your route in Sigüenza before you set out. Water is scarce above 1,000 m; fill your bottle at the public fountain on Plaza de la Iglesia because the next potable source is ten kilometres away in the hamlet of Alcoroches.

After rain the clay surface turns to grease; lightweight boots with deep tread save dignity as well as ankles. In July and August the mercury still nudges 30 °C by mid-afternoon, but night temperatures plummet to 12 °C – pack a fleece even if Madrid felt like Marbella.

A Twenty-Minute Drive to the Middle Ages

Sigüenza lies 18 km down the GU-954, a road that twists through holm-oak forest and suddenly spits you out in front of a castle that Walt Disney would have rejected as too perfect. The contrast is deliberate: spend the morning bumping elbows with Spanish school parties in the cathedral’s El Greco chapel, then escape as the coach engines cool for the lunch break. Back in Paredes the only queue is behind the farmer loading hay bales onto a mule trailer.

The city’s covered market (open till 14:00, closed Monday) sells vacuum-packed portions of cordero al estilo serrano – mountain lamb rubbed with garlic and wild marjoram – that slip neatly into a day-pack cool bag. Pair it with a bottle of tempranillo from the Uclés cooperative and you have the makings of a picnic that costs less than a single London sandwich. Bread must be bought before 13:00; the village bakery closed in 1998 and the mobile bread van honks its horn at the crossroads for precisely three minutes each weekday morning.

When the Village Remembers How to Party

For fifty weekends a year Paredes sleeps, but during the first week of August the population quadruples. Cars with Madrid number plates squeeze against stone doorways, grannies who left in 1965 reappear with teenage grandchildren, and the plaza hosts a makeshift bar under a plastic awning. The fiesta programme is printed on a single A4 sheet: evening mass, procession, foam party for the kids, and a communal paella that requires every able-bodied man to carry a bag of saffron rice to the square at 09:00 sharp.

Visitors are welcome – nobody checks credentials – but be aware that bedrooms are traded like heirlooms. If you have not booked a village house months in advance, you will be driving back to Sigüenza after the fireworks. The display lasts twelve minutes and finishes with a deafening barrage that ricochets off the surrounding cliffs; dogs hate it, humans get free ear-plugs handed out by the mayor’s daughter.

How to Arrive Without a Sat-Nav Nervous Breakdown

From Madrid-Barajas take the A-2 towards Zaragoza for 110 km, exit at kilometre 104 signed “Sigüenza Norte”, then follow the CM-101 for 12 km of switchbacks. The final 6 km to Paredes is single-track concrete; passing places are marked by white stones. If you meet a tractor, pull in and wave – the driver will wave back because he probably built the wall you are parked beside.

Public transport is possible but patchy. Renfe’s regional train links Chamartín to Sigüenza in 90 minutes; from there, a Monday-to-Friday bus leaves at 14:15 and returns at 07:00 next day. Miss it and a taxi costs €35 – book through the hotel reception in Sigüenza because local cabbies do not speak English and they expect cash.

There is no petrol station, no cashpoint, and the small grocery opens for two hours on Tuesday and Friday. Fill the tank, wallet and water bottles in Sigüenza before the climb.

Silence as a Seasoning

Britons who measure holiday success by the number of sights ticked off will leave disappointed. Paredes offers instead what the Spanish call “la hora de la siesta permanente”: a place where the loudest noise is the church bell counting the hours you have forgotten to check your phone. Come for the walking, stay for the sky – at this altitude the Milky Way really does look like spilled sugar – and depart before the August cousins ruin the acoustics. You will carry away nothing more tangible than the memory of wind brushing across an empty plateau, but that may be exactly what your city lungs needed.