Villafranca Montes De Oca

Head-torches bob through the pre-dawn streets at five-thirty. By six the bakery on Calle Real has sold its last baguette, and the fountain outside the church is filling bottle after plastic bottle. This is Villafranca Montes de Oca on an ordinary May morning: the last chance for coffee, cash and courage before the Camino disappears into 800-year-old beech woods and a 600-metre climb that British walkers call “the Meseta’s final exam”.

Forty-three kilometres north-east of Burgos, the village sits where the grain plateau shoves against the Montes de Oca, a low, dark ridge that once guarded the border between Castile and Navarre. Every metre of altitude has been earned: the road in from the A-1 autorota rises so steadily that ears pop. The air smells of resin and sheep, and night temperatures can scrape freezing even when the capital bakes at 30 °C. Drivers on the N-120 thunder past a single set of traffic lights; pilgrims notice instead the scallop-shell tiles set into the zebra crossing.

A Town That Built Beds, Not Walls

No one came here for the view. Villafranca’s reason for existing is the hospital, not the scenery. In 1146 Queen Urraca endowed the Hospital de San Antonio Abad “for poor pilgrims who faint in the mountains”. The thick-walled complex still stands two minutes from the modern albergue, its arched doorway wide enough for two stretchers. Today it is a private mansion filled with Andalusian tiles and grandfather clocks; guests sleep in converted grain lofts where silos have become rain-fall showers. A night costs €110—roughly what a mediaeval traveller might have paid in silver coins—yet the place fills because it is the only en-suite accommodation until Belorado, 17 km on.

Across the lane the public refuge charges €8 and issues ear-plugs in welcome packs. British reviewers swap tips on which wing snores loudest (“the Camino anthem in D minor,” one Hampshire teacher wrote). Both buildings share the same water source, a stone fuente that never freezes. Locals still fill jerry-cans here; the mineral count is so high that tea comes out the colour of burnt toffee.

Forest That Begins Where the Streetlights End

Leave the village by the sports field and tarmac gives up suddenly. A chestnut way-marker points into trees so tall the path feels like a tunnel. Within five minutes mobile signal dies; within ten the only sound is boot tread on fallen beech mast. This is the Bosque de Oca, 11 km of protected woodland where wolves were hunted until the 1950s and where modern pilgrims swap stories about headless Templars. None of it is true, but the place encourages theatre. Sculptures appear without ceremony: a steel pilgrim with scallop-shell face, a wooden goose referencing the Game-of-Goose-camino theory beloved of British conspiracy podcasts.

The climb is not brutal—400 m spread over 8 km—but it is relentless. Mid-June hikers hit 30 °C in the valley and pull on fleeces at the 1,150 m pass. Spring brings surprise fog; October can gift T-shirt mornings and sleet by lunchtime. The forest saves its colour for the last week of October when beeches turn copper overnight and the ridge looks dipped in Oxo.

What to Eat When the Bells Stop

Back in the village, lunchtime is 14:00 sharp. Bar El Pelegrino serves a three-course menú del día for €12: garlic soup thick enough to hold up a spoon, roast lamb that slides off the bone, and arroz con leche dusted with cinnamon. Vegetarians negotiate for judiones—fat butter beans stewed with paprika—and receive sympathetic nods rather than guarantees. The local red is a young Ribera that tastes of licorice and costs €2.50 a glass; Brits accustomed to pub prices order two and feel faintly criminal.

Evening shuts down early. By 21:30 the pavement tables are stacked and the baker is sweeping flour into the gutter. Those still awake drink orujo with the village’s four policemen—one for every 125 inhabitants—and listen to the church clock strike quarters all night. Double glazing is a recent arrival; light sleepers should pack ear-plugs along with the fleece.

Detours for Non-Walkers

You do not have to lace boots to reach the ridge. A forestry track leaves from the cemetery, switch-backing 5 km to a picnic spot called Hayedo de la Tejera. Saturday families from Burgos barbecue here under beeches that pre-date Shakespeare. Bring sausages and fire-lighters; free stone grills wait under the trees. The return can be looped via the ruined monastery of San Félix de Oca, where only the baptismal font remains—perfectly intact, full of last night’s rain and yesterday’s coins.

Winter converts the same road into a sled run when snow arrives. January daytime hovers around 2 °C, but skies are cobalt and the forest becomes a soundproof gallery of black trunks and white drifts. The hotel drops tariffs to €70 and throws in log fires and complimentary chupitos of cherry liqueur. Chains are advisable; the last 4 km are gritted only after the school bus has proved it can’t get through.

When the Village Parties

Fiesta calendars revolve around pilgrims even if few are left by August. Santiago on 25 July packs the church for a polyglot mass; the priest announces gospel readings in Spanish, English and Korean, then blesses backpacks with a garden sprinkler once used for tomato plants. Nuestra Señora de Oca follows two weeks later: processions, brass bands, and a street stall selling doughnuts the size of steering wheels. Casually dressed hikers stand out among villagers in Sunday tweed; both groups unite at 03:00 for chocolate-dipped churros served from a van that smells of hot oil and sugar.

Leaving Town, With or Without Shell

Most depart before sunrise, head-torches picking out the bronze scallop embedded in the road. Others linger for the bakery’s second batch at seven, watching the village wake: lights flick on, a farmer herds 200 sheep through the main street, the petrol station pumps its first diesel. By eight the place feels empty again, the Camino swallowed by trees as it has been for nine centuries.

Villafranca will never win beauty contests. It offers no sea view, no postcard plaza, no artisan ice-cream. What it does offer is a bed, a bath, a square meal and the certain knowledge that civilisation ends at the last house before the forest begins. For many walkers that is exactly the send-off they need.