Navalperal de Tormes

The morning bus from Ávila drops you at a stone crossroads forty-five minutes early. No café opens before the sun hits the granite, so you wait with the driver while his diesel idles. Below, the Tormes begins—just a bright trickle slipping under the road—and above, the Sierra de Gredos gathers cloud like a half-done shawl. This is Navalperal de Tormes: seventy-odd houses, one church bell, and a height that makes your ears pop before you’ve unpacked.

Granite, Slate and the Sound of Water

Everything here is grey until the light decides otherwise. Walls are mortared granite chipped from the same ridge the village sits on; roofs are pizarra, thin slate that rings when hail comes. Streets are barely a car’s width, tapering into paths where sheep have right of way. The older houses keep wooden gates wide enough for a mule and cart; newer second-holiday homes have aluminium shutters painted burgundy or bottle-green, the only strong colour in sight. Washing flaps on first-floor balconies, and someone’s terrier announces each passer-by with the enthusiasm of a town crier.

The Tormes is never out of earshot. It starts in the boulders above the last vegetable plot, gathers in a stone trough where locals still fill plastic jerrycans, then slides under the road and tumbles toward the Atlantic more than four hundred kilometres away. In May the water is cold enough to numb a wrist in seconds; by August it’s merely brisk, and children from the summer houses dam it with sticks to make paddling pools no deeper than a Wellington boot.

Walking away from the river the gradient bites. The village sits at 1,300 m, high enough for chestnut trees to give way to Scots pine within a twenty-minute stroll. Spring arrives late: daffodils in late April, cherries in June. Nights stay cool even when the Meseta below is frying eggs on car bonnets, so bring a fleece for the terrace. The compensation is clarity—stars sharpen to pinpricks and the Milky Way looks smeared on with chalk.

Maps in Your Pocket, Weather in Your Face

Navalperal is a staging post rather than a destination. Footpaths strike north to the Laguna Grande glacial cirque (six hours hard going, ice axes in May), south-east to the Cuevas del Águila limestone caves (ninety minutes by car then guided tour, €9), and west along the river to El Barco de Ávila where the castle walls host summer cinema. None of the routes is way-marked to British standards; you need the 1:25,000 Adalid “Sierra de Gredos” map, and even that shows trails that vanished in the 1950s. Phone reception dies two kilometres out of the village, so screenshot your route before leaving tarmac.

The weather changes faster than a taxi meter. Mornings can begin in bright sunshine, switch to hail by eleven, and finish with a thunderstorm that turns every path into a sluice. Locals watch the ridges: if the cloud cap slips below the Almanzor peak, head back. Waterproofs are not negotiable, and the difference between a pleasant walk and a mountain rescue is often a spare pair of dry socks.

What Passes for Lunch

There is no shop in Navalperal. A white van labelled “Carnicos Sancho” honks its way up the hill on Thursdays selling vacuum-packed chorizo and morcilla; bread arrives frozen and costs €2 a loaf. The single bar, attached to Cruz del Gallo hotel, keeps Spanish hours: coffee from seven, beer from eight, food only if you ring the bell and wait for María to finish hanging laundry. The menu is whatever her husband shot last weekend—partridge stew in season, or trout caught within sight of the tables. A three-course comida costs €14 including wine from nearby El Barco; vegetarians get tortilla or go hungry.

For provisions you drive ten kilometres to El Barco de Ávila, where the Día supermarket stocks tofu, hummus and other foreign luxuries. Saturday morning’s market fills the main square: IGP Carne de Ávila beef at €18 a kilo, judiones (butter beans) the size of pound coins, and cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves that oozes when the afternoon warms. Buy early; locals clear the good stuff by ten.

When the Village Comes Back to Life

Population swells in August when emigrants return from Madrid, Barcelona, even Swindon. The fiestas begin on the 15th with a mass whose hymns echo off the stone houses, followed by a paella cooked in a pan two metres wide. Children race sack races in the square while grandparents compare hip replacements under the walnut tree. At midnight a covers band plays Spanish indie from 2003; the volume is democratic—everyone can hear it, whether they want to or not. If you need sleep, request a back room at the hotel or join in until the Guardia Civil clock strikes three.

September brings the Día de la Trashumancia, when shepherds herd two thousand sheep through the village on the way to winter pastures in Extremadura. Traffic stops, dogs go berserk, and the mayor hands out plastic cups of calimocho (red wine and Coca-Cola, an acquired taste). It’s the best free show for miles, but dates shift yearly—check the Ayuntamiento website a fortnight ahead.

Beds, Bills and Getting Out

Accommodation is limited. Cruz del Gallo has fourteen rooms with beams, wool blankets and bathrooms the size of a London cupboard. Doubles start at €70 including breakfast (strong coffee, churros, homemade jam). Cheaper beds are scarce; the nearest youth hostel is twenty-five kilometres away in Hoyos del Espino, and the campsite at Garganta de los Infiernos fills with Spanish students at weekends. Book ahead for Easter and July–August; outside those months you can walk in, though the heating surcharge in January adds €12 a night.

Public transport is skeletal. One bus leaves Ávila at 07:15, returns at 19:30. Miss it and a taxi costs €70. Car hire from Madrid airport takes two hours on the A-50 and A-51; after El Barco the AV-931 coils uphill for eighteen kilometres, narrow enough to make passing a hay lorry an exercise in faith. Winter tyres are compulsory when snow falls, usually first week of December. The council grits, but not before locals have spun their tractors across the ice for sport.

Leave the car in the square and walk. Head upstream until the last roof disappears, then follow the sheep tracks onto the ridge. The village shrinks to a grey smudge, the river becomes a silver thread, and the only sound is wind combing through pines. Navalperal won’t give you stories for the pub—no Michelin stars, no souvenir tat, no sunset that looks computer-generated. Instead it offers altitude, silence and the small revelation that Spain still has places where the day ends when the work does, not when TripAdvisor says it should. Bring a map, a sweater and low expectations; they’ll be exceeded by breakfast.