Hoyos del Collado

The church bell strikes noon yet only twenty-nine souls are officially here to hear it. At 1,474 m, Hoyos del Collado sits high enough for the air to thin your lungs and for mobile reception to give up entirely. Granite houses shoulder each other against the wind, their Arabic tiles dulled by decades of snow. A single baker’s van winds up from Barco de Ávila—24 km of switchbacks—bringing yesterday’s pitu bread and gossip from the valley.

Stone that Outlasted the People

Every wall here is a ledger. You can read which families kept cows (lower sheds with timber mangers), who could afford a second chimney, and whose orchard still produces the small, sharp apples once used for winter aguardiente. The masonry is mampostería—chunks of local granite fitted without cement—so walls shift slightly each freeze-thaw season yet never quite fall. Doorways are barely five foot six; medieval builders assumed anyone taller was probably up to no good.

Walk the one paved lane at dawn and you’ll meet the village’s entire working economy: María sweeping last night’s oak leaves off her step, the Serrano brothers loading three goats into a Peugeot pickup held together with twine, and the vecino who rents out the only holiday cottage, El Rondillo de Gredos (€90 a night, minimum two nights, firewood extra). He’ll offer directions to the church, then add that the key hangs on a nail behind the font “unless the magpie’s taken it again”.

Inside, the church is dim and smells of paraffin and old wool. The Christ on the cross is sixteenth-century, fingers still showing traces of oxblood paint. Look up: the bell-tower floorboards are stamped “Bilbao 1923”, a reminder that even here industrial Spain eventually arrived—by mule, no doubt.

Walking the Sky’s Edge

Leave the last slate roof behind and the path immediately tilts onto berrocal terrain—glacial granite hummocks that twist ankles and delight geologists in equal measure. Within ten minutes the village shrinks to a dark smudge among tawny grass. Ahead, the Sierra de Gredos sharpens into a wall of quartz and gneiss; behind, the Barco valley unrolls like a crumpled green cloth.

Spring and autumn give the kindest walking days—air cool enough to keep the buzzards circling low, ground firm enough not to skid on cowpats. Two waymarked routes start from the football pitch (no goals, sheep graze the centre circle). The shorter loop, Camino de la Dehesa, climbs 250 m through holm-oak pasture to a stone chozo where shepherds once spent June nights counting stars instead of sheep. Allow ninety minutes; add thirty if you stop to photograph the Digitalis flowering between the rocks—poisonous, purple, improbably theatrical.

Longer, the track to Puerto de Chía (5 km, 350 m ascent) crests at a gap where the wind funnels straight from the Meseta. On clear days you can pick out the white radar dome of Navalacruz thirty kilometres away. Take a jacket even in July; up here 25 °C in the village translates to 16 °C plus horizontal rain.

Winter turns serious. Snow can fall October to May, and the AV-931 is routinely chained above 1,200 m. The village keeps a communal tractor for ploughing—fuel cost shared among households, non-negotiable. If you’re tempted by white-blanket photographs, ring El Rondillo first; owners will tell you honestly whether the last guest needed a shovel to reach the front door.

What Ends up on the Plate

There is no restaurant. Meals happen in kitchens where the radio murmurs Radio Nacional and the tablecloth is a faded Real Madrid souvenir. Accept an invitation and you’ll eat patatas revolconas—potatoes mashed with pimentón and torreznos—followed by ternera de Ávila that grazed within sight of the village. The beef carries the faint taste of wild thyme; chew slowly, both out of respect and because the cut is likely to be entrecot hacked off the bone with a pocket knife.

Goat appears at fiestas, usually as cabrito asado roasted in a bread oven that doubles as the village’s only reliable source of central heating. If you’re offered chanfaina, a stew of rice, liver and cinnamon, say yes; refusal marks you as the kind of outsider who complains about gravel roads.

Mushroom season—October after the first Atlantic depression—turns cautious farmers into dawn raiders. They leave before light with cuchillos de setas and return with níscalos that sell for €28 a kilo in Ávila market. Ask before photographing any basket; some spots are inherited like family crests.

When the Calendar Rewinds

For three days each August the population quadruples. Grandchildren arrive from Madrid and Valladolid, cars squeezing into spaces designed for donkeys. The fiesta has no written programme; instead, word passes at the bakery van: “Mass at seven, then the paella behind the church, bring your own chair.” Night-time means verbena music from a single speaker balanced on a hay bale, elderly couples dancing pasodobles while teenagers compare 4G signal strength at the cemetery gate—highest point in the village, naturally.

At midnight everyone shuffles to the square for the quema de la cuchillada, a bonfire of old furniture and, symbolically, grievances accumulated since last year. It burns fast; granite doesn’t radiate heat, so the crowd disperses once the last chair leg smoulders. By sunrise the only sound is the receding hum of cars heading back to city jobs, and the village contracts to its winter self.

The Honest Bit

Hoyos del Collado is not for seekers of artisan gin or Wi-Fi. Rain can strand you; the nearest shop is 18 km away; and if the baker’s van breaks down, breakfast becomes whatever you remembered to bring. Mobile coverage is two bars on a rock facing east—Vodafone only, sorry EE customers.

Yet if you measure travel by how thoroughly a place resets your internal clock, this scatter of roofs against a big sky does the job. Stay two nights, walk one ridge, accept one unsolicited coffee, and you’ll leave with the useful knowledge that somewhere in Spain the day still starts when the cows move, not when the phone pings.