Pinilla del Campo

The thermometer in the hire car reads 1,047 m as you crest the last rise. Below, a scatter of stone roofs sits in a bowl of wheat stubble so wide you can see tomorrow’s weather forming on the opposite rim. This is Pinilla del Campo, Soria province, population twenty on a optimistic census day. The village shop closed in 1998; the school bell last rang in 2005. Yet the engine goes off and the wind takes over, a low, steady hush that feels like the whole plateau is trying to tell you to pipe down.

What passes for a centre

There isn’t one. The single paved lane threads past the church of San Miguel, its Romanesque tower patched with brick after a lightning strike in 1932, and stops at the gravel turning circle in front of the bar. The bar is open because three neighbours decided the cultural association needed a kettle and a beer tap. Opening hours are “probably 11-ish” and it shuts again once the tortilla is gone. Bring cash; the card machine was pawned years ago and the nearest ATM is 22 km away in Ólvega.

The houses are built from the same golden limestone as the fields, roofs weighted with hand-made terracotta tiles the colour of burnt toast. Some doorways still carry the family name painted in iron oxide a century ago; others are bricked up, the owners dead or departed to Zaragoza, Madrid, Manchester. Wander carefully—many of the empty dwellings are unlocked and the floors have remembered how to be caves.

Walking without waymarks

Official hiking routes stop at the county boundary, but the agricultural tracks that radiate out across the meseta are public, straight and mercifully level. A thirty-minute stroll south brings you to the abandoned cortijo of Los Llanos, its threshing circle intact, a perfect stone solar dial. Keep walking and you’ll meet shepherds on quad bikes who will wave you through flocks of churra sheep, their milk destined for the nutty ewes’-milk cheese you can buy on market day in Soria. In July the temperature touches 34 °C and there is no shade except the occasional poplar planted as a windbreak; carry more water than you think polite.

Spring is kinder. The wheat glows emerald, stone curlews call overhead and the air smells of damp earth and wild thyme. October turns the stubble to bronze and the sky to cobalt; photographers arrive with tripods and thermos flasks, though rarely stay past sunset because beds simply don’t exist here.

Night shift

Darkness falls like a shutter. By 10 p.m. the only light is a faint glow from the bar’s single bulb and the sweep of your own head-torch. Then the Milky Way switches on, a highway of frost across the sky sharp enough to cast shadows. Pinilla sits inside the “Campo de Gómara Dark Sky Polygon”, a local initiative that asked farmers to point security lamps at the ground. The result is star-crowding you last saw in childhood: the Pleiades become a fistful of diamonds, Andromeda is a smudge you can resolve with binoculars borrowed from the church sacristy (leave a €10 donation for roof repairs). Wrap up; even in August the mercury can dip to 8 °C once the wind turns northerly.

Eating, or not

The bar can rustle up:

• Tortilla española, still runny in the centre
• A plate of Soria’s mild chorizo, sliced thick and served with bread that tastes of wood-smoke
• Local cheese, semi-cured, that squeaks between teeth

That is the menu. Coffee comes in glasses, brandy is optional and costs €2 a nip. When it’s gone, it’s gone. For anything more elaborate drive 25 minutes to Ólvega where Asador Casa Patricio will serve you a shoulder of milk-fed lamb, slow-roasted in a clay dish the size of a bicycle wheel. Book ahead at weekends; half of Soria city drives over for Sunday lunch.

How to get here without crying

Fly to Madrid or Zaragoza. From Madrid take the A-2 east to Medinaceli, then the SO-151 north; total drive two hours on empty motorway. Zaragoza is closer—100 km, mostly on the AP-68—but flight times from London are less convenient. Car hire is essential; buses terminate in Ólvega and taxis refuse to come the final stretch after 8 p.m. Fuel up before you leave the ring-road: service stations thin out faster than the population.

The calendar nobody prints

• Late April: Fields green, lambs on wobbly legs, perfect for gentle walks
• 29 September: Fiesta de San Miguel. The village swells to 120, a brass band plays, roast suckling pig appears from somewhere and everyone pretends the population problem is solved for 24 hours
• December–February: Snow arrives roughly one year in three. The SO-151 is cleared by 10 a.m., but the side road into Pinilla becomes a bob-sleigh run. Chains or a sturdy sense of humour are compulsory

Brutal honesty section

There is nothing to buy except one beer at a time. Phone reception drifts in and out like a bored teenager. The doctor visits only if ten patients phone ahead; otherwise the nearest A&E is 45 minutes away. In midsummer the sun is a hammer and the only swimming option is a concrete agricultural tank full of irrigation water—enter at your own dermatological risk. If you need nightlife, museums, souvenir shops or anything that could be described as “buzzy”, stay in Soria city and make this a day-trip.

Yet the place delivers something increasingly scarce: silence you can record on a phone and play back later to remind yourself what absence of engine noise sounds like. The horizon is so wide you begin to doubt maps. And when the wind drops at dusk, the stones seem to exhale five centuries of small, stubborn lives. Bring sturdy shoes, a flask of coffee and a jacket even in July. Pinilla del Campo won’t entertain you, but it might let you overhear yourself thinking—provided you can live without Wi-Fi long enough to listen.