Cabezarrubias del Puerto

The evening bus from Ciudad Real drops you at the edge of the village, turns, and rumbles away down the N-420. For a moment the only sound is a tractor ticking itself cool outside the co-op. Then the bells start: a soft bronze clank moving across the scrub as a flock of merino sheep drifts home past the football pitch. You are 738 m above sea level, 80 km south-west of the provincial capital, and the nearest souvenir shop is 35 minutes away in Puertollano. Cabezarrubias del Puerto does not do “welcome centres”; it does, however, still know the exact weight its neighbours like their cheese.

A village that measures time by wool and acorns

Cabezarrubias sits squarely in the Valle de Alcudia, a corridor once used by shepherds driving flocks between summer and winter pasture. The name itself – “red-headed pass” – refers to the iron-rich ridge behind the church and to the natural gap that lets the wind, and the occasional tourist, slip through. Dry-stone walls divide the surrounding dehesa into chess-board squares of holm oak and cork; pigs root for acorns while sheep graze the spaces between. Look closely and you’ll see horizontal scars on the tree trunks: bark stripped every nine years for bottle corks, the rhythm as reliable as a calendar.

Inside the village the architecture is what estate agents might call “honest”. Houses are single-storey, thick-walled, limewashed in colours that range from yoghurt to nicotine. Timber doors, iron-banded and often ajar, open onto patios where a single lemon tree provides both shade and dessert. The 16th-century church of San Pedro Apóstol keeps watch from the highest point; its squat tower was rebuilt after lightning in 1897 and still serves as the reference for anyone giving directions. “Bajo la torre” – by the tower – means the cluster of streets where mobile signal flickers into life and the Saturday market squeezes itself into a plaza barely two vans wide.

Walking without way-marks

There are no ticket booths, audio guides or colour-coded arrows. Instead you get dusty farm tracks that leave the last streetlamp behind within five minutes. Head south on the Camino de la Dehesa and you drop gently into a shallow valley where stone shepherds’ huts, or chozos, stand roofless but intact, their corbelled domes looking oddly Celtic. An hour’s steady plod brings you to the abandoned railway halt of Los Morales; the line closed in 1987 and sleepers now serve as garden fencing in nearby gardens. Turn north-east and you can loop back along the Arroyo de la Nava, meeting the evening migration of sheep exactly as the light turns amber.

Cyclists arrive with thicker tyres and lower expectations. The CV-135 that links Cabezarrubias with neighbouring Almadenejos is tarmac, single-track, and popular with local hunters who drive at rally speed. Accept that fact, choose dawn, and the reward is ten kilometres of roller-coaster riding between wheat stubble and oak shade. Gradient rarely tops six per cent; surfaces vary from “acceptable” to “last graded during the peseta era”. Bring a spare tube: thorns from the retama shrub have no respect for Marathon Plus.

Food that remembers the day before yesterday

The only place still serving at 21:30 is Bar la Plaza, half kitchen, half front room, where the television stays on mute and the owner’s dog claims the best chair. Order caldereta de cordero and you get a clay dish of shoulder meat that has collapsed into tomato, bay and pimentón; bread arrives in a paper bag so you can tear, mop, and avoid washing extra plates. Salt levels run high – ask for “poco sal” if you need – but the flavour is straight out of a 1950s farmhouse. A portion feeds two hungry walkers for €12; beer is €1.80 and the house wine arrives in an unlabelled bottle that started life containing olive oil.

Breakfast choices are limited to the same bar or the bakery on Calle Real, open 07:00–11:00 and closed on Mondays. Buy a still-warm mollete (soft bread roll), walk fifty metres to the fountain, and assemble a picnic while the square fills with old men positioning themselves for the first sun. Cheese hunters should look for Queso Manchego Curado from the cooperative at number 24: aged eight months, straw-coloured, with a sweetness British palates often compare to aged Cheddar. Vacuum-sealing is free; remember to stash it in hold luggage, not hand baggage.

When the village turns the volume up

August’s fiestas patronales triple the population as emigrants return from Madrid, Barcelona and, increasingly, Manchester. Brass bands march at noon, fireworks rattle off the church walls at midnight, and the plaza hosts a community paella that needs a paddle the size of a cricket bat. Visitors are welcome but anonymity is impossible; accept the plastic cup of beer pressed into your hand and prepare to explain where Leicester is. Accommodation within the village is limited to three rooms above the bakery – booked a year ahead by returning families – so most outsiders stay 15 km away in Puertollano and drive in for the night fair. If you hate noise, come in late September instead: the vendimia, or grape harvest, produces a quieter weekend of foot-treading and first-press tasting in nearby Brazatortas.

Practical truths

You need a car. The daily bus from Ciudad Real leaves at 14:00 and returns at 06:45 next morning; miss it and a taxi costs €90. Hire desks at Ciudad Real rail station keep irregular hours – pre-book and allow 45 min for paperwork that feels longer than the drive itself. Fill the tank before you leave; the village garage opens only weekday mornings and card machines sometimes “están estropeados”.

Cash remains sovereign. The solitary ATM sits inside the Supermercado Co-op, ejects €50 notes, and is empty from Saturday lunchtime until Monday. Bars will grudgingly accept contactless for croissants but not for the €2.80 glass of local anis. Phone signal on UK networks fades once you leave the main street; download offline maps and expect WhatsApp messages to arrive in clumps when you pass the church.

Winter brings sharp nights: temperatures can dip to –8 °C and the wind ripping up the valley feels Scottish. Summer, on the other hand, is a furnace; 38 °C is routine and afternoon activity stops. April–May and late September–October give you wildflowers or golden dehesa without the extremes, though Easter week can be wet enough to turn farm tracks to porridge.

Leaving without the souvenir T-shirt

Cabezarrubias does not sell fridge magnets. The closest thing to a memento is the stamp in your National Park passport from the visitor centre in Almadenejos, five minutes away, or the faint smell of bay leaf that lingers in your rucksack after last night’s stew. What the village offers instead is a calibration of scale: a reminder that 484 people, a handful of sheep, and one bar can still constitute a functioning society. Drive out at dawn and the bells follow you down the valley, counting time in a currency older than euros. Somewhere between the cork oaks and the limestone ridge you realise the place has already forgotten you – and that, for once, feels like the correct kind of tourism.