Avellaneda

The church bell strikes noon, yet nobody stirs. A dozen granite houses stare across a single lane, their Arabic tiles warming in the high-altitude sun. At 1,353 metres, Avellaneda is technically a village; in practice it is a pause between pasture walls, a place where the Sierra de Gredos exhales and the province of Ávila remembers its own pulse.

Twenty-three residents appear on the latest padron, though locals joke the figure doubles when the cattle dogs are counted. What looks like abandonment is simply scale: doors stay unlocked because everyone knows the sound of every footstep, and because the nearest supermarket waits twenty-five minutes down a switch-back road that snow cancels for weeks each winter. Come March the lane erupts with crocuses; by October the first frost silences them again. Seasons here are not calendar pages but facts you feel in your lungs.

Stone, Snow and the Smell of Oak Smoke

Houses grew rather than were built. Granite blocks, dragged from neighbouring fields by oxen long since turned to legend, rise two storeys and then stop—anything higher would have to fight the wind that scours the plateau nine months a year. Adobe fills the gaps, the colour of dry biscuits; chimneys spill the sweet, sharp scent of encina oak that has seasoned in barns since the spring felling. You will not find souvenir shops hiding behind rustic façades; instead you may stumble upon a neat pile of freshly split firewood stacked against a wall still warm from yesterday’s sun, proof that someone is betting on tonight’s frost.

The Iglesia de San Miguel stands square in the middle of this scatter of dwellings, no bigger than an English parish chapel yet twice as old. Step inside and the temperature drops ten degrees; wax, dust and the metallic tang of century-old censer linger. Frescoes survive only in fragments where damp has not peeled them from the wall, but the carved granite font remains—every local infant since 1632 has been dunked here, the priest compensating for thin mountain air by working fast.

Outside, three stone fountains still run. One feeds a stone trough wide enough for cattle; another trickles into a basin built for human elbows. The water is cold enough to numb teeth, safe to drink, and carries the faint iron tang that dentists in Madrid charge fortunes to remove. Treat them as working infrastructure, not selfie backdrops; the farmer who arrives at dawn with plastic jugs has priority.

Walking the Walls that Keep no One Out

Avellaneda offers no ticketed attractions, yet it is difficult to be bored. A lattice of drove roads radiates into the dehesa, the high-altitude oak pasture that once paid the rent in acorn-fattened pork. Stone walls, waist-high and moss-flecked, divide common grazing from private vegetable plots; follow them and you are soon alone except for the odd chestnut-coloured cow wearing a cowbell the size of a grapefruit. The bell’s clonk carries half a mile, a mobile landmark in country where paths exist because hooves remember them, not because a council ever signed off.

Maps help, but the best route is the one that leaves the village south-west, drops gently for forty minutes to the Arroyo del Fresnillo, then climbs again through holm oak to the Puerto de la Chorrera at 1,650 m. From the pass the view opens north across the Adaja basin; on a clear April evening you can watch the sun set behind the distant glass skyline of Ávila while snow still glints on the Gredos crest behind you. The round trip takes three hours, requires no technical skill, and the only entrance fee is the occasional thigh-high bramble.

Wildlife does not perform on schedule, yet patience is usually repaid. Griffon vultures wheel overhead most afternoons; wait quietly by the water troughs at dawn and roe deer sometimes step out, grey against the broom. Wild boar churn the verges at night—evidence arrives as freshly turned soil and the sour smell of churned chestnut husks. Photographers do well at first and last light, when granite glows peach and the oak trunks turn charcoal black. A 50 mm lens is plenty; anything longer risks picking out the neighbour’s washing line and earning a lecture on privacy.

When Hunger Strikes and the Village Has no Shop

There is no bar, no bakery, not even a vending machine. Self-catering is obligatory unless you have booked half-board at the only guesthouse, a converted hayloft with four rooms and a wood-stove that doubles as central heating. Bring supplies from Piedrahíta (19 km) or Barco de Ávila (26 km); both supermarkets close for siesta between 14:00 and 17:00, a timetable that feels less quaint when your petrol light is already flashing.

If cooking feels like cheating on holiday, drive ten minutes down to Puerto Castilla where Casa Macario opens Thursday to Sunday and serves judiones del Barco—buttery haricot beans stewed with chorizo and pig’s cheek—followed by lechazo, milk-fed lamb roasted in a wood-fired clay oven until the skin shatters like burnt sugar. Expect to pay €18 for the three-course menú del día, wine included, and do not ask for vegetarian options unless you are content with omelette.

Autumn brings wild mushrooms, a subject treated with the seriousness Britain reserves for tax returns. locals will name five species in the time it takes you to say “button mushroom”, and every family guards its chanterelle slopes like state secrets. Picking without landowner permission risks an on-the-spot fine of €300; play safe and join the guided mycological walk arranged each October by the regional park office in Piedrahíta (€12, basket provided).

Getting There, Staying Warm, Knowing When to Leave

Public transport stops at Barco de Ávila; from there a taxi costs €35 and must be booked a day ahead because only two cars serve the entire comarca. Driving remains the sensible option: take the A-50 from Madrid to Ávila, then the N-502 towards Plasencia until the turn-off at Puerto de la Paramera. The final 12 km snake up the valley on the AV-901, single-track for stretches, unfenced and popular with free-range cattle who believe headlights are a personal insult. Snow chains are compulsory equipment from November to March; the road is cleared sporadically and the village tractor doubles as the local gritter.

Accommodation is limited to the aforementioned guesthouse (€70 b&b, cheaper for longer stays) and two self-catering cottages booked through the regional tourism board. Heating is wood-fired; hosts deliver a wicker basket of logs each evening and charge by weight. Nights above 1,300 m can drop below freezing even in May—pack a fleece and regret travelling only with linen at your peril.

Leave before the first major snowfall and you will remember Avellaneda as a place where quiet has texture, where stone walls outnumber people, and where the only traffic jam is caused by a farmer moving fifty sheep. Stay too late and you may spend an unexpected week, snowed in, drinking maté by the stove while the village priest tells you stories that never quite made it into the guidebooks. Either outcome, it should be said, has its merits.