Gómara

The church bell strikes noon and the only other sound is wind scraping across stone. At 1,050 m above sea level, Gómara’s main street is already in shadow while the surrounding cereal plateau glows amber under a September sun. Three hundred inhabitants, one bar, a bakery that opens when the owner’s arthritis allows, and a football pitch edged by threshing floors: this is the Sorian comarca capital that time never quite got round to forgetting.

A Plateau That Forgets the Sea Exists

Stand on the rise behind the cemetery and the view runs uninterrupted to the curvature of the earth. No coast, no motorway, no industrial estate—just wheat, barley and the occasional holm oak bent into a question mark by the wind. The nearest city, Soria, is 55 km south on the SO-820, a road that narrows to a single lane after Ágreda and demands full-beam for the dusk return. Madrid lies 170 km away, yet the plateau feels like a different geological era: Jurassic limestone, Tertiary clay, and soil so thin you can count the pebbles between furrows.

Winters start in mid-October and linger through Easter. Temperatures drop to –12 °C, pipes freeze, and the gravel track to the upper allotments becomes a toboggan run. Summer compensates with 30 °C afternoons, zero humidity and a night sky so dark that the Milky Way casts a shadow. Bring layers whatever the month; the altitude turns sunset into a cold snap within minutes.

Stone, Adobe and the Smell of Cordero

Gómara’s houses are the colour of the land they stand on. Granite footings, adobe walls the thickness of a forearm, and roof tiles glazed mouse-brown by a century of rain. Most dwellings remain family-owned, locked up for eleven months while their owners work in Valladolid or Barcelona, then flung open in August when the village population quadruples. The resulting rent market is informal: word of mouth, €40 a night for a two-bedroom cottage, sheets smelling of camphor and wood smoke. There is no hotel, no rural suite with spa vouchers. The closest accommodation list is in Ágreda, 18 km west, where the three-star Hotel Villa de Ágreda charges €70–€90 depending on whether you want a view of the castle or the petrol station.

The parish church of San Andrés dominates the single plaza like a referee who has long since stopped blowing the whistle. Romanesque apse, baroque tower grafted on in 1763, wooden ceiling that smells of pine resin and candle wax. Inside, a polychrome Virgin whose 19th-century paint is flaking into pastel snow. The door is kept locked; ask for the key at the bakery—if it’s open. No donation box, just an honesty policy: replace the key within the hour so the neighbour can lock up for siesta.

Walking Without Waymarks

Serious hiking maps stop at the comarda boundary, so print your own. A useful loop starts at the cemetery gate, follows the gravel service road north for 4 km to the abandoned hamlet of Valdeprado (roofless, poppies in the parlour), then cuts south-east along a sheep track back to the village. Total distance 9 km, cumulative climb 180 m, zero shade. Carry water; the only spring listed on the 1953 topographic survey dried up in the 1987 drought and no one has bothered to update the legend.

Spring brings calandra lark and short-toed eagle; October skies funnel common crane south in V-shaped platoons audible long before they appear. Binoculars are more use here than a phrase book—locals communicate in rapid Castilian with a Sorian slur that drops final syllables, but they will slow down if you buy them a beer.

Food That Knows Its Own Grandmother

The bar, simply called “El Bar”, opens at seven for farm workers and closes when the last domino falls. Menu: coffee with condensed milk, brandy from a plastic pourer, and a bocadillo of morcilla that costs €3.50 if you eat it standing, €4 at the table. Friday is cocido day—chickpeas, pig’s trotter, cabbage, and a saffron tint that comes from a tin labelled “Colorante”. Locals finish by tipping the broth into their coffee cup; follow suit if you want to pass for an honorary gomareño.

For the legendary roast suckling lamb you need to drive 25 km to Berlanga de Duero, where Asador Casa José will sell you a quarter cordero lechal for €24, crispy enough to cut with the edge of a postcard. Book ahead at weekends; Spanish families treat the Sunday drive to a roast like Brits treat brunch in the Cotswolds, and they are just likely to bring the entire primos network.

Fiestas Measured in Firewood, Not Fireworks

The patronal fiesta of San Andrés lands on the last weekend of November. Temperatures hover around freezing, daylight is gone by six, and the programme consists of a sung mass, a raffle for a ham, and a disco in the sports hall where the playlist stalled in 1994. The real action happens inside houses: whole lambs threaded on iron spits in sitting-room fireplaces, rivers of red wine from Campo de Borja, and poker games that finish with sunrise and a hangover cured with garlic soup. Visitors are welcome but unannounced; knock, bring a bottle of something decent, and you will leave three hours later with a godparent offer and a plastic bag of leftover roast.

In mid-August the village stages its modest summer romería: one evening, one brass band, one portable bar under the pines. Even then the decibel level rarely exceeds the church bell. Fireworks are deemed too expensive; instead, teenagers drag hay bales into the football pitch and set them alight—a Druidic spectacle that the mayor pretends not to notice.

Getting Here, Leaving Again

There is no railway. ALSA runs one daily coach from Madrid’s Estación Sur at 15:30, arriving Soria 18:10, connecting microbus to Gomara at 18:45—except Fridays when it leaves at 18:30. Miss that and the next service is Tuesday. Driving remains the only sensible option: A-2 to Medinaceli, exit 118, then SO-820 via Ágreda. Petrol stations close at 21:00; fill up in Soria if you are returning late. Snow chains are compulsory in vehicles from 1 November to 31 March; Guardia Civil patrols issue on-the-spot fines to anyone caught without, and local farmers are past caring about stranded tourists who thought “it doesn’t look that cold”.

Mobile coverage is patchy. Vodafone picks up one bar on the church steps; Orange users need to climb the cemetery hill and face north-east. Wi-Fi is mythical. Treat the absence as part of the package: the plateau is a blackout zone where the twenty-first century thins out like the air itself.

Come for the silence, the lamb, and the disorientating pleasure of standing in the middle of a golden void. Leave before the wind starts sounding like voices, or you may find yourself pricing up ruined barns and calculating how long tinned tomatoes keep in a sub-zero kitchen. Gómara offers no postcards because the view refuses to fit; you will have to remember it in your head, and heads, like adobe walls, let the draught in.