Piedrahíta

The granite arcades of Plaza Mayor throw long shadows at breakfast time, even in May. By ten o’clock the sun has climbed over the Sierra de Gredos and the stone tables outside Cafetería Nueva are full of farmers in flat caps arguing over the price of calves. No-one looks up when a shepherd appears, drives his flock straight across the square and out towards the pinewoods. Traffic lights? None. Tourists? Hardly any. Piedrahita operates on its own clock, 1,060 m above sea level and half a world away from the Costas.

A Duke’s Town that Forgot to Modernise

This was once the summer seat of the Dukes of Alba, one of Spain’s grandest dynasties, and their fortified palace still glowers down Calle del Palacio. The building is private now—peeled paint, locked gates, the occasional ducal crest flaking into the gutter—yet it sets the tone for the whole town: proud, a little shabby, indifferent to the 21st century. Walk in any direction and you bump into coats of arms carved above doorways, family names that appear in 15th-century chronicles, and houses whose walls are built from slabs of granite thick enough to blunt an axe. Conservation has been selective; a 1970s apartment block with aluminium balconies can sit right beside a Renaissance mansion without anyone seeming to notice. The effect is oddly honest—history as lived fabric rather than museum diorama.

The planners have at least protected the porticoed main square, one of the widest in Castilla y León. The arcades are practical as well as photogenic: in winter they keep the snow off your tapas, in summer the shade drops the temperature by five degrees. Tuesday is market day and the square fills with cheese trucks and stalls selling garlic ropes, but by two-thirty the stallholders are gone and the place empties so completely you can hear sparrows quarrelling in the eaves.

What Passes for Sightseeing

There is no checklist here. The 16th-century church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción keeps the doors open during Mass; turn up at 11:00 on Sunday and you can wander in beneath a barrel vault smothered in gold leaf. The altar is pure late-Renaissance overload—cherubs, scrolls, columns that serve no structural purpose—yet the overall impression is one of solidity rather than flash. Climb the narrow spiral if the sacristan is feeling generous and you’ll see the town plan laid out below: rooflines of weathered slate, back gardens full of leeks, and beyond them the Corneja river sliding towards the Atlantic basin.

Away from the centre the streets narrow into medieval lanes built for carts, not cars. House numbers follow no discernible order; getting lost is part of the programme. Eventually you’ll emerge onto the Paseo de los Álamos, a tree-lined promenade where grandparents push prams at sunset and teenagers drift past scrolling TikTok on 3G signal that flickers in and out. A paved footpath continues south for 3 km to the abandoned railway station, grass growing between the sleepers, ideal for an evening stroll when the granite walls are still radiating the day’s heat.

Walking Country without the Crowds

Piedrahita sells itself as a base for “rural tourism,” a phrase that sounds ominously worthy until you realise it just means decent walking and almost total solitude. Six sign-posted trails leave from the edge of town; pick up the free leaflet before the tourist office closes at 14:00 or you’ll be relying on guesswork and the occasional paint splash on a rock. The shortest circuit, the Ruta del Vallecillo, follows an irrigation ditch through oak scrub and takes barely an hour—perfect if you’ve overdone the chuletón at lunch.

Ambitious hikers can string together farm tracks that climb to the Puerto de Mijares (1,340 m) and drop into the Alberche gorge. Spring brings orchids and swooping kites; high summer is hot and shadeless, so start early and carry more water than you think necessary. In October the broom turns fluorescent yellow and the air smells of wet thyme; that’s the sweet spot, when skies are clear but nights are cool enough to justify lighting the town’s first wood-smoke fires.

Cyclists arrive too, drawn by empty roads and gradients that British legs classify as “mildly sadistic.” The CL-515 north towards the Gredos massif averages 6 % for 12 km with no café break until Guisando, 25 km on. Mountain rescue is thin on the ground—download an offline map, tell your hotel where you’re going, and don’t count on mobile reception in the valleys.

Food that Forgives a Long Walk

Castilian cooking is built on three pillars: beef, beans and anything that can be slow-roasted in a wood-burning oven. Piedrahíta’s restaurants stick to the script with admirable rigour. At Restaurante Goya on Calle Doctor Galindo a single chuletón (rib steak) easily feeds two hungry adults and arrives sizzling on a steel platter the size of a bicycle wheel; €38 per kilo, salad extra, no credit cards. If that sounds like an Olympic event, order the judiones del Barco instead—giant butter beans stewed with chorizo and enough broth to revive a drowned pilgrim. Vegetarians get the usual single-dish concession: pimientos del piquillo stuffed with spinach and cheese, tasty but you’ll still be hungry.

Lunch is firmly a 14:00–16:00 affair; turn up at 16:30 and the cook has gone home. Evening tapas are not complimentary here—order a caña of beer and you’ll get exactly that, nothing nestling on top. Do as the locals do and share a ración of morcilla (blood sausage spiced with cumin) or pimientos de Padron, the Spanish version of roulette with the occasional explosive chilli.

Sweet teeth are catered for by the bakery on Plaza Mayor where perrunillas (crumbly shortbread made with pork lard) are sold by weight and wrapped in waxed paper. They keep for a week in the saddlebag, should your ride take you further into the sierra.

The Practical Bits No-one Tells You

Piedrahíta sits 110 km west of Madrid, but the last 40 km are on the N-110, a winding two-lane highway that truckers treat as a race track. Allow two and a quarter hours from the airport if you rent a car; public transport is a single daily bus that leaves Madrid’s Estación Sur at 15:00 and returns at dawn. Accommodation is mostly family-run guesthouses—Hotel Rural Cayetana is the reliable choice, doubles from €55 including breakfast, Wi-Fi patchy but staff who will phone ahead for restaurant bookings if your Spanish stalls.

Shops observe the siesta with devotion: everything except the pharmacy and one Chinese bazaar shuts from 14:30 to 17:00. Bring cash; the only ATM runs dry on Friday when half of Ávila province descends for the market. English is rarely spoken—download a translation app and practise the phrase “¿Hay una mesa para dos?” before arrival.

When to Cut Your Losses

Come in deep midwinter only if you enjoy the colour brown. The surrounding hills are bleached, the wind funnels down the valley and night-time temperatures dip below –5 °C. Snow can block the road to the Gredos ski-station 35 km away, though Piedrahíta itself usually stays clear. Conversely August is fierce: 32 °C by noon, thin shade, and hotels without air-conditioning. May–June and mid-September to early October give you warm days, cool nights and a reasonable chance of clear skies for hiking.

And if the weather turns biblical? Retreat to the arcade of Plaza Mayor, order a café con leche, and watch the storm sweep granite-coloured clouds across the ridge. Even in the rain Piedrahíta keeps its composure. The town has never learned to hustle, and that, for visitors schooled in faster rhythms, may be its most valuable lesson.