Candilichera

The sunflower heads are the size of dinner plates and all facing south, like spectators in an amphitheatre of wheat. In the middle sits Candilichera, population one coach-load, at an altitude that makes London’s tallest skyscraper feel modest. If you arrive in July the thermometer can nudge 35 °C; David Lean still persuaded audiences that the surrounding plain was a frozen Russian lake. The giveaway is the cicadas—no self-respecting Muscovite winter soundtrack includes those.

Lean’s crew left in 1965, taking the fake snow with them. What remains is a textbook Castilian farming settlement that has refused to tart itself up for visitors. Stone walls the colour of digestive biscuits, timber doors you could break down with a shoulder, and a single church tower that doubles as the local mobile-phone mast. There is no ticket office, no gift shop, no brown sign pointing to “Zhivago Meadow”. The village simply gets on with threshing barley and watching the weather, exactly as it did before Omar Sharif rode through.

A Plain That Plays Tricks on the Eye

Candilichera sits on a gentle rise above the River Gómara, 1,050 m up on Spain’s northern meseta. The height knocks the edge off midsummer heat—nights drop to 16 °C even in August—and sharpens winter to a knife: expect –8 °C on clear January mornings. The surrounding fields form a patchwork owned by three extended families; hedges are rare, so the horizon feels 30 km away even when it is twice that. In late May the wheat is still green and the plain looks almost Irish; by mid-July the same land turns the colour of Weetabix, and the only green left is the thin line of poplars along the dry riverbed.

Footpaths strike out from the north-east corner of the village, following tractor tyre ruts rather than way-marks. A 45-minute circuit—carry water, there is no café—leads to the abandoned railway that once linked Soria to the Duero valley. The sleepers are gone but the ballast remains, colonised by thyme and tiny blue butterflies. Turn 180 degrees and you can still see the church tower; locals use it as their compass when dust clouds rise in spring. The only audible sound is the wind rubbing the wheat heads together, a faint hiss like distant surf.

Stone, Mud and the Occasional TV Aerial

The village grid is two streets wide and four deep, enough for 72 houses, fourteen of them empty. Rooflines sag like old mattresses, but the walls stand straight: they are 60 cm thick, built from limestone quarried 3 km away and held together with lime mortar the colour of clotted cream. Adobe gables bulge where rain has nibbled them; instead of rebuilding, owners patch with fresh mud every decade. The result is a masonry lesson in ochres, from butter to burnt toast, interrupted only by satellite dishes that sprout like grey mushrooms.

The church of San Pedro keeps its doors unlocked on Sunday mornings; at other times you may have to ask at number 23, where María keeps the key in a biscuit tin. Inside, the nave is cool and smells of candle grease. A single retablo, 17th-century and severely chipped, shows Saint Peter minus both hands—victims of a threshing-machine accident in 1932, according to parish gossip. Light filters through alabaster panes, turning the dust motes gold and giving the stone floor the temporary pattern of a chessboard.

Lunch, If You Planned Ahead

Candilichera has no bar, no shop, no petrol pump. The last bakery closed when the owner retired in 1998; bread now arrives in the boot of a Seat Toledo every Tuesday and Friday. Smart visitors stock up in Ólvega, 25 minutes west, where the supermarket sells local chorizo labelled simply “de pueblo” and still warm from the drying shed. A shaded stone bench beside the church is the accepted picnic spot; the village dogs will watch you chew but rarely beg.

If you prefer a chair and a bill, drive 15 minutes to Abejar. The Mesón de la Villa does a fixed-price menú del día (€14, weekdays only) featuring cordero asado—crisp-skinned lamb that flakes onto the plate like slow-cooked pork shoulder. Vegetarians get a plate of pimientos de padrón and are expected to be grateful. House wine comes from Valdejalón, not Rioja, and tastes better after a morning in the wind.

When the Sun Drops, the Temperature Follows

Evening brings the village’s quietest pleasure: the sky. At 1,000 m you are already above half the atmosphere; add zero light pollution and the Milky Way becomes a credible cloud. Stand on the track that leads past the cemetery and wait five minutes for night vision; satellites chase each other across the dome like polite fireflies. Shooting stars are common in early August—the Perseids burn bright here because the air is thin and dry. Bring a jacket even in July; the thermometer can fall 15 degrees while you stand still.

Winter nights are less romantic. January fog pools in the hollows and can sit for days, turning the streetlights into fuzzy halos. The road from the N-122 is technically open but ungritted; a dusting of snow is enough to make the final 6 km interesting. Locals chain up, visitors usually wait. On the upside, the stone houses hold heat well: if you rent one of the three holiday cottages on the south side, a single wood-burner keeps the ground floor at 20 °C while the mercury outside bottoms out at –10 °C.

Getting Here, and Away Again

Candilichera is not on the way to anywhere famous. The quickest route from Britain is Ryanair to Zaragoza (Stansted, 2 h 10 min), then a hire car north-west on the A-2 and the N-122 past Soria. Total driving time from the airport is two hours; add 30 minutes if you stop to photograph the sunflower fields, which turn whole hillsides yellow in the second half of July. There is no bus into the village—one daily Alsa service stops on the main road at 15:37, leaving you a 4 km walk along a lane with no pavement. Taxis from Soria cost €50 if you can persuade a driver to come that far.

Accommodation is scattershot. The nearest hotel is the Cadosa on the Soria ring road (45 min), functional, with a pool that faces directly into the evening sun. Closer options are all self-catering: a pair of restored labourers’ cottages in Candilichera itself (€90 a night, two-night minimum) and a small camping site at Abejar with wooden bungalows that smell of pine disinfectant. Book before you arrive; the village mobile signal drops to one bar if the wind blows from the north, and the cottage owner lives in Valladolid.

Leave Without the Souvenir

There is nothing to buy here, and that is the point. Candilichera will not entertain you, feed you or even guarantee a hot shower. What it offers is a calibrated stillness: the chance to walk a grid of streets where the loudest noise is your own footstep, to sit on a wall and realise the horizon has not moved since your grandfather’s day, to discover that the line between wheat and sky is sharp enough to cut assumptions. Stay long enough and you start measuring distance in steeple visibility and time in the colour of stubble. Then the wind shifts, a tractor coughs into life, and you remember that places like this survive because they refuse to become anywhere else.