Hinojosa del Campo

The only sound at 1,034 m is the wind combing through cereal stubble. Twenty-six residents remain in Hinojosa del Campo, a single-lane village that sits higher than Ben Nevis’s summit yet registers on few Spanish road maps. Drive 40 minutes south-east of Soria city and the tarmac narrows; wheat fields tilt like a calm sea and the horizon keeps its distance. Mobile signal drops to one flickering bar. This is the Campo de Gómara, a region that prefers sky to people.

Stone, adobe and a door that never opens

Houses are the colour of the earth they stand on. Granite footings give way to adobe walls two-feet thick, hand-mixed from local clay and straw. Roof tiles curl like old parchment; many slipped during the 2021 storms and still wait for repair. The church tower, the tallest thing for twenty kilometres, is locked on weekdays. Peer through the iron grille and you’ll see a single bulb hanging above a baroque retable blackened by centuries of frankincense and cold winters. There is no ticket office, no audio guide, no postcard rack. If you want commentary, knock at the house opposite—Doña Pilar keeps the key and will open for anyone polite enough to ask, but she expects a coin for the roof fund.

Outside, the plaza is thirty paces across. A stone bench, a defunct fountain, two dying elms. In August the temperature touches 34 °C at midday and the bench burns; in January it falls to –8 °C and the same stone draws frost. Shade comes from your own hat; central heating is whatever you can coax from the village’s one surviving coal merchant. He delivers in hundred-weight sacks on Thursdays, provided the SO-820 is clear of snow.

Walking without waymarks

There are no signed trails. Instead, farm tracks radiate like spokes: north towards Fuentelsaz, east to Aldealpozo, south across the plateau to Calatañazor. Farmers still move sheep along the Cañada Real Soriana, an ancient drove road as wide as a London bus that once carried wool to Segovia. Follow it for an hour and you meet no-one, only the occasional mastiff asleep on a hay bale. Boot prints fossilise in dried mud; buzzards trace circles overhead.

Spring brings colour—red poppies stitched through green wheat—but also mud that clings like wet cement. Autumn is kinder: the stubble is short, the air sharp, and the grain silos glow amber at dusk. Take water; the only fountain is in the village and the next bar is 12 km away in Ólvega. A paper map is advisable: GPS drifts when clouds thicken, and the plateau’s repeating fields can turn a circular walk into an unintended 20-kilometre yomp.

Night skies, empty stomachs

Darkness falls suddenly. No streetlights means starlight sharp enough to cast shadows; the Milky Way appears as a smear of chalk across black slate. On moonless nights you can read by it, provided your Spanish stretches to cereal packets. Astronomers bring tripods and set up beside the grain store where the concrete is level; the village council recently installed a single blue floodlight that spoils half the sky, but a five-minute walk east restores the blackout.

Food is the problem. The last grocer closed in 2019; the bar followed six months later. Self-catering is obligatory. Stock in Soria before you leave—Mercadona on the ring road stays open until 9.30 p.m. and sells decent morcilla to fry with eggs. Locals recommend the Saturday market in Ólvega (08:00–14:00) for lamb shoulder at €9 a kilo, but you’ll need a cool box. If you crave a menu del día, Mesón de la Villa in Ágreda serves roast suckling lamb for €18 including wine, thirty-five minutes away by car. Book ahead: coach parties from Zaragoza fill the dining room at weekends.

Getting there, getting stuck

Public transport does not reach Hinojosa. The nearest railway halt is at Gómara, 22 km west, where two trains a day stop on request—one at 7:14 a.m., the other at 8:47 p.m.—but you still need a taxi across empty roads. Car hire from Madrid-Barajas is simpler: take the A-2 east to Zaragoza, peel off at km 104 onto the SO-20, then follow the SO-820 through Ólvega. Fuel at the Repsol outside Soria; the village has no petrol station and locals buy diesel in jerrycans. In winter carry snow chains—plateau blizzards appear within an hour and the road is not prioritised for ploughing. Phone reception fails at the same moment the snow begins; download offline maps before you leave the motorway.

Accommodation is limited. One cottage has been restored as a two-bedroom rental: wood-burning stove, solar-heated shower, no Wi-Fi. Prices hover round €70 a night with a two-night minimum; contact details are pinned to the church door and response time can be three days. Wild camping is tolerated if you ask the farmer whose land you intend to use—expect a shrug and the warning “cuidado con los perros”. Hotel alternatives lie 25 km away in Soria city, handy for the Romanesque cloisters, but that defeats the purpose of staying on the roof of Spain.

The plateau’s small mercies

Hinojosa will never feature on glossy regional brochures. There are no boutique wineries, no craft shops, no sunset yoga. What you get is space measured in leagues, silence you can feel in your chest, and a lesson in how Castile survives on the margins. The village is shrinking—two more houses collapsed last winter—but the remaining neighbours still whitewash façades each spring, still hang peppers on strings to dry, still nod at strangers because every visitor counts. Bring sturdy shoes, a sense of self-sufficiency and a full tank. Leave expectations at the city limits; the plateau has its own timetable, and it is never in a hurry.