Navaescurial

The church bell strikes eleven and nobody stirs. Half the houses are shuttered, their owners long since moved to Madrid or Valladolid, and the single bar-cum-shop has already closed for the day. At 1,211 metres on the northern lip of the Sierra de Gredos, Navaescurial doesn’t do “buzz”. What it offers instead is a crash course in how Castilian hill farmers have lived since the Middle Ages – provided you arrive with a full tank of petrol and no appetite for souvenirs.

A village that downsized

Fifty-four souls are registered here, though on a weekday in March you’d swear the figure was closer to twelve. Stone and adobe houses line two short alleys that tilt towards the valley; every third doorway is bricked up, the family crest still visible in the cracked plaster. Roof beams project like ribs, having once supported threshing platforms now claimed by swallows. The place feels half-asleep, but it is not abandoned. Vegetable plots are weeded, almond trees pruned, and wood smoke curls from chimneys at dusk. Someone is always watching from behind a lace curtain – less suspicion than habit in a settlement where strangers arrive only when the weather or the sat-nav fails.

The architecture is honest mountain pragmatism: metre-thick granite walls, tiny south-facing windows, internal courtyards where livestock once overwintered. You can trace the social hierarchy in stone – the bigger the doorway, the more land the family held on the windy plateau outside the village. No one bothered with ornament; the nearest quarry was twenty kilometres away and winter arrives early.

Walking tracks older than the A-road

Past the last house a concrete farm track dissolves into a web of footpaths that have linked high pastures since the thirteenth century. Most are still way-marked by dry-stone walls rather than paint flashes, so bring a map. Head north-east and you drop into the Tormes gorge, a three-hour circuit that ends at a Roman bridge swallowed by brambles. Southwards, an old drove road climbs gently through holm-oak dehesa to the abandoned hamlet of La Hoya, its bell-less church now a stable for Avileña cattle. Spring brings purple orchids and the clatter of cowbells; October turns the landscape to burnt umber and the air smells of resin and wet slate.

Serious walkers use Navaescurial as a quiet back-door to the Gredos cirque, but don’t underestimate altitude or afternoon storms. A 4 a.m. start from the village square will get you onto the plateau of La Serrana by sunrise, with the Almanzor peak glowing pink across the valley – and precious little phone coverage if the mist rolls in.

What passes for catering

There is no restaurant, no bakery, no cash machine. The single grocery opens three mornings a week and stocks tinned tuna, UHT milk and local chorizo fierce enough to numb the tongue. If you want a coffee you knock on the bar shutter and hope Ana is in a good mood; she’ll pull an espresso for eighty cents but refuses to serve after two o’clock. Picnic is the prudent option – stock up in Ávila on the drive up, or phone ahead to the neighbouring village of Navarredonda where a family-run asador will sling a quarter of roast lamb onto a wooden board for eighteen euros. Vegetarians are not mocked, merely pitied; the closest hummus remains in Madrid.

Water, at least, is plentiful. A stone fountain fed by a mountain spring gushes year-round beside the church. Locals still fill plastic carboys here rather than trust the mains supply that arrived only in 1998.

Seasons that decide for you

May and late-September are the sweet spots. Daytime temperatures hover around 20 °C, nights are cool enough to justify the village’s obsession with thick blankets, and the track from the main road is free of snow. Come July the plateau becomes an oven, the grass yellows to straw and every shutter stays closed against the glare. August fiestas consist of a communal paella under the pines and a disco that finishes at midnight because the generator overheats.

Winter is a different proposition. The AV-931 is routinely closed after the first big snowfall; council ploughs prioritise the milk lorry route to Barco de Ávila, not tourists. If you do reach the village, the reward is total silence broken only by the crack of ice on stone gutters. Bring chains, a sleeping bag rated to minus ten, and enough food for two extra days – storms can isolate the place for forty-eight hours, an event the older residents greet with philosophical shrugs and a shot of orujo.

Where to lay your head

Accommodation within Navaescurial itself amounts to two rural houses booked through word-of-mouth or the regional tourist office in Ávila. Both have wood-burning stoves, patchy Wi-Fi and neighbours who rise at dawn to feed hunting dogs. Expect to pay sixty euros a night for a two-bedroom cottage, towels included, breakfast not. The safer bet is to base yourself twelve kilometres down the mountain in Navarredonda where the four-star Izán Puerta de Gredos has under-floor heating and a wine list, or the state-run Parador de Gredos if you fancy government-owned luxury in a fifteenth-century hunting lodge. Either way, phone ahead – when the skiing is good in nearby Béjar every room for fifty kilometres sells out.

The honesty clause

Navaescurial will not entertain children who need arcades, nor adults who measure experience by Instagram likes. Rain will turn your walking boots the colour of the soil, the church interior is plain to the point of austerity, and you may go twenty-four hours without hearing English spoken. Yet if you arrive prepared – cash in your pocket, offline maps downloaded, expectations dialled to “rural Castile” – the village repays with something increasingly scarce: a place where Spain has stopped performing for visitors and simply gets on with being itself. When the evening light hits the granite and a pair of storks clatters overhead, you realise that silence, too, can be a form of hospitality – just don’t expect it to come with room service.