Peñalba de Ávila

The church bell tolls twice and the sound ricochets off granite walls, across a plaza where a tractor is parked beside the single bar. At 1,073 metres, Peñalba de Ávila is already cooler than the baking plains of Madrid an hour away, and the air carries the thin, resinous scent of encina oak. This is Castilla at its most unvarnished: no souvenir stalls, no flamenco nights, just stone, sky and the rhythmic clack of a neighbour splitting firewood behind her house.

Peñalba sits on the first wrinkles of the Sierra de Ávila, close enough to the provincial capital (35 minutes by car) to make a day trip possible, yet high enough for snow to linger on north-facing roofs while the meseta below shimmers in 30-degree heat. The village is small—barely 130 permanent souls—and the entire grid of lanes can be walked in twenty minutes, provided you pause to let the elderly labrador outside the grocer’s inspect your shoes.

Stone and adobe houses, their wooden balconies painted the same ox-blood red, lean slightly into the slope. Many are second homes now, shutters flung open only at weekends, but enough tractors still rattle past at dawn to remind visitors this is not a film set. Firewood is stacked with military precision, and the occasional whiff of pig manure drifts over from a corral—honest, agricultural, real.

Walking without waymarks

The best walking here is gloriously unbranded. A farm track leaves the upper barrio, passes between cereal fields and drops to an oak-lined arroyo where boot prints and goat pellets outnumber human footprints. After forty minutes the path peters out on a low ridge; from the crest you can trace the whole Adaja valley, its wheat squares alternating with dark scrub, the Gredos peaks glinting white on the western horizon. There are no interpretation boards, just the wind and, if you stand still, the distant chain-saw buzz of a wood pigeon.

Birders should bring binoculars. Booted eagles ride thermals above the ridge, and red kites tilt their forked tails over freshly ploughed land. In April the field margins flare yellow with bastard cabbage and the air flickers with swallowtail butterflies. After heavy rain the red clay sticks like Brighton beach tar; lightweight trail shoes are hopeless—proper treaded boots or, better, the wellies sold at the Agrícola in nearby Arévalo.

The village itself offers only one official footpath: a 5-km loop signed with faded yellow dashes that leads past threshing floors now used as vegetable gardens. Allow two hours, including the inevitable conversation with the retired teacher who tends his potatoes in a collar and tie and will insist you take a lettuce home.

What you’ll eat—and when you won’t

There is no restaurant in Peñalba. The bar, Casa Cándido, opens at 08:00 for thick coffee and churros, shutters again at 14:00, and may or may not reappear at 20:00 depending on whether Marisol’s grandchildren are visiting. The printed menu is fiction; ask what exists. On a good day you’ll get judías del Barco—butter beans the size of a 50-p piece, stewed gently with smoked paprika and a single slice of chorizo that stains the broth sunset orange. A plate costs €8 and is filling enough to skip supper.

Otherwise, self-cater. The grocer on Plaza Mayor stocks UHT milk, tinned tuna and the local white wine, Barco de Ávila, sold in plastic one-litre bottles for €3. Bread arrives from a travelling van at 11:00 sharp; miss it and you’ll be chewing yesterday’s baguette. On Saturdays drive 15 minutes to Arévalo’s market for tomatoes that actually taste of tomato and for chuletón—an Avilan beef chop thick enough to feed two. Grill it over the vine prunings left in a crate outside most houses; the smoke smells faintly of blackcurrant and keeps midges away.

Altitude arithmetic

Elevation changes everything. Night-time temperatures in January can plunge to -8 °C even while Madrid hovers at 6 °C. Snow sometimes fences the village in for a day; the AV-901 road is cleared early, but the council gritter prioritises the school bus route, not the lane to your holiday cottage. Summer, by contrast, is blissfully sane: 26 °C at midday, 14 °C at dawn—perfect for walking before the sun edges over the ridge. Bring a fleece whatever the month; the wind at this height has teeth.

The altitude also thins the crowd. August in the nearby city of Ávila means queues for the medieval walls; in Peñalba you’ll share the fountain with two retirees and a bored cat. The trade-off is darkness: street lighting is dim and switches off at midnight, so torches are essential for the walk back from the bar. On new-moon nights the Milky Way is a smear of chalk across black slate—better than any rooftop terrace in Seville.

Getting here, or why the train won’t help

Public transport is a single school bus that leaves at 07:30 and returns at 14:00, term-time only. From Madrid, hire a car at the airport; the drive up the A-50 and AP-51 takes 90 minutes, the last 12 km curling through holm-oak dehesa where black bulls graze beside the road. Petrol stations are scarce—fill up in Arévalo. A return Ryanair flight from Stansted to Madrid runs about £90 off-peak, but factor in the extra €70 for the rental car; without wheels you’re marooned.

Parking in Peñalba is uncomplicated: anywhere that isn’t a gateway. The plaza accommodates perhaps a dozen cars; arrive on a Sunday in August and you may have to squeeze against the cemetery wall. Otherwise, it free, unregulated and two minutes from wherever you are staying.

When the village wakes up

Festivities are short, intense and incomprehensible to outsiders. Around 15 August the place doubles in size as emigrants return. A sound system appears in the plaza, playing Spanish 90s rock until the mayor pulls the plug at 01:00. There is a mass, a procession, and a communal paella cooked in a pan the width of a cartwheel. Visitors are welcome to buy a €5 ticket; you’ll be handed a plate and watched benignly while you eat. Fireworks consist of one string of bangers set off at midday—no midnight spectacular, no risk assessment, just a puff of smoke drifting over the grain store.

The rest of the year silence reigns. Sunday lunchtime is the closest thing to bustle: cars with Ávila number plates disgorge extended families who squeeze into Casa Cándido for roast lamb and the football results. By 17:00 the plaza is empty again, chairs stacked, television flickering behind pulled curtains.

Worth the detour?

Peñalba de Ávila offers nothing Instagrammable beyond light and space. If you need museums, taxis or soya lattes, stay in the city. If you are content with stone houses that have seen centuries of wheat harvests, with walking tracks that peter out into nothing, with night skies unspoiled by neon, then the detour is worthwhile. Pack a phrase-book—English is rarer than storks—bring cash, and fill the tank. The village will give you back calm, cold dawns, and the creak of a wooden door that probably opened for Napoleonic troops. Take it or leave it; Peñalba does not mind either way.