Almenar de Soria

The thermometer outside the Bar-Restaurante de la Plaza reads 18 °C at eleven on a July morning, yet thirty kilometres away in Soria city it is already nudging 30 °C. At 1,020 m above sea level, Almenar de Soria sits high enough to trap the breeze that sweeps across the cereal plains of Campo de Gómara, and high enough to make you think twice about walking out in flip-flops once the sun drops.

A village that measures the year by wheat, not tourists

There is no dramatic gorge, no fairy-tale castle, no Instagram hotspot—just 1,100 inhabitants, a single bar, and an horizon that unrolls like a pale-yellow carpet in every direction. Tractors outnumber cars two to one; the loudest noise at midday is the clang of a workshop shutter rolling up for business. Closed doors are part of the scenery in winter, when the wind that barrels across the Meseta finds nothing to stop it, but even in August plenty of houses stay shuttered—their owners working in Madrid or Barcelona and returning only for the fiestas.

The church tower, rebuilt after a 19th-century lightning strike, is the easiest orientation point. Stone houses with timber doors and tiny windows cluster around it, their roofs pitched steeply enough to shrug off the snow that can arrive as early as November. Adobe walls the colour of dry earth show where older dwellings have been swallowed by extensions; here and there a wooden balcony has been added, incongruous as a hat on a horse. New-build agricultural sheds—galvanised steel, roller doors—sit only a street away, a reminder that the village earns its living from grain, not visitors.

Walking without waymarks

Formal hiking trails do not exist. Instead, a lattice of farm tracks radiates from the last houses into fields of barley and durum wheat. The going is flat, the surface hard-packed clay; in an hour you can complete a loop south to the derelict windmill on Cerro del Moro and be back in time for lunch. Spring brings poppies and corn-cockle among the stalks, autumn a smell of straw and diesel as the harvest rolls in. Take a map: the landscape repeats itself every half-mile and phone signal vanishes with the first dip in the ground.

Cyclists can follow the same grid, but bring tyres at least 35 mm wide—after rain the clay turns to glue. Mountain-bike pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago de Madrid sometimes freewheel through, yet the village has no bike shop, no repair stand, not even a public pump; the nearest is in Soria, half an hour by car.

Food that does not try to impress

The Bar-Restaurante de la Plaza opens at seven for coffee and churros, closes when the last customer leaves. There is no written menu; ask what exists that day. Lamb chops—chuletas—come from animals that grazed the surrounding stubble fields, grilled over vine cuttings until the fat edges crisp. A plate of three costs around €12; chips are extra and arrive from a freezer, not hand-cut. The local wine is a young tempranillo from the Duero valley, drinkable, €2.50 a glass. Vegetarians get scrambled eggs with wild asparagus in season, or a tomato salad that tastes of greenhouse if you come before July.

The bakery, two doors down, produces pan de pueblo—round, dense, four-hour ferment, €1.40 a loaf. It shuts at 13:00; after that you will need to drive to the supermarket on the Soria road. No deli, no craft cheese stall, no Saturday farmers’ market. If you want the strong sheep-milk cheese that Castilla y León is famous for, ask at the bar—someone’s cousin always has a wheel in a fridge.

When the village wakes up

Fiestas begin on the third weekend of August. The programme is printed on a single A4 sheet taped to the church door: mass, procession, brass band, foam party in the concrete polideportivo. Emigrants return; the population swells to perhaps 2,000. A hundredweight of morcilla and suckling lamb disappears in two nights. Visitors are welcome, but there are no hotel packages, no English-speaking guides, no wristbands. If you need a bed, book Casa Leonor months ahead—the only self-catering house listed online, three bedrooms, small pool, €120 a night with a two-night minimum. Otherwise you sleep in Soria and drive back along the SO-20, watching for wild boar on the tarmac.

Winter fiestas are quieter. On 6 January the Three Kings distribute sweets from a tractor trailer because the village cannot afford camels. Temperatures dip to –8 °C; the church boiler struggles to raise the nave above 12 °C. Bring a coat, and if you hire a house check that the owner includes heating—bottled gas is expensive and extras appear on the bill.

Getting there, getting out

Fly to Madrid, collect a hire car, head north on the A-2, then the N-234 towards Soria. After 190 km take the CL-101; Almenar is signposted 12 km further. Total driving time from Barajas airport is two hours fifteen, unless fog closes the motorway between Medinaceli and Almazán—in winter that can add an hour. There is no petrol station in the village; fill up in Soria. Buses run daily from Madrid to Soria, but the local service that once threaded the villages was cancelled in 2011. Without a car you are marooned.

Leave time for the provincial capital. Soria’s Romanesque cloister and the cell where the poet Antonio Machado lived are twenty minutes away, and the city’s river walk offers shade that Almenar cannot. Then again, you may prefer to stay on the plateau, where the only queue is at the bakery on Sunday morning and the night sky still looks like spilled sugar.