Hornillos de Cerrato

The tractor that pulls up outside Hornillos de Cerrato’s only shop does so at exactly eleven each morning. Its driver buys a packet of Ducados, talks for seven minutes about the price of barley, then rattles back towards the fields. Nobody notes the time; the village simply resettles into the hush that follows diesel. At 800 m on the Castilian plateau, sound carries further, and the day is organised around these small, audible punctuation marks.

Hornillos sits in the middle of Spain’s cereal lung: forty minutes south-east of Palencia city along the CL-613, then another ten on the VP-7034, a road so empty that red-legged partridges often outnumber cars. The 150-odd residents have no supermarket filling station, cash machine or mobile coverage worth mentioning. What they do have is a front-row seat on the Cerrato landscape, a gently corrugated sea of wheat, lentils and sunflowers that changes colour every fortnight from St Patrick’s green to biscuit brown and, briefly, the burnished copper of late July.

Adobe, Wood Smoke and Stone that Breathes

The village plan is simple: a stone church tower, a rectangle of dusty streets, and houses built from adobe bricks the colour of digestive biscuits. Many still wear their original timber doors—low enough that a tall visitor must duck—and the ground-floor hatches that once led to underground cellars where wine and slaughtered pigs survived the fierce continental climate. Some façades are freshly limewashed; others have been left to flake, so you can read the nineteenth century in the exposed straw of the bricks. There is no estate-agent language here: “partially restored” means a roof that no longer leaks, “needs TLC” means you may share the sitting room with swallows.

Inside the single-nave church of San Juan Bautista the temperature drops ten degrees. The font is scalloped from five centuries of infant knuckles, and the altar frontal is painted a municipal green that would make a British county council proud. Nothing is roped off; if you want to photograph the worn sandstone steps you simply push the heavy door and hope the swifts don’t object.

Walk twenty minutes past the last house and you reach the threshing floors—wide stone circles where horses once trampled grain. Most are cracked, colonised by thyme and lichen, but the view they afford stretches thirty kilometres to the Montes de Torozos. On windless evenings the wheat heads catch the low sun and the whole plateau looks like brushed velvet.

Walking Without Waymarks

Forget laminated panels and colour-coded arrows. Paths here are tractor tracks that braid through the fields, reliable in dry weather, gummy after rain. A useful loop starts by the cemetery gate, drops into the tiny Arroyo de Hornillos, then climbs to the abandoned hamlet of La Muela—roofless houses, a bread oven shaped like a beehive, and a stone bench where shepherds still leave salt blocks for livestock. The round trip is 8 km; allow two and a half hours and carry water because the only bar is back in the village and it opens when the owner feels like it.

Serious walkers can link up the Cañada Real Leonesa, an ancient drove road that once funneled merino sheep to winter pastures in Extremadura. The surface is chalky and arrow-straight; follow it west for 12 km and you reach Barruelo de Santullán, whose cooperative sells vacuum-packed lentils for €2.30 a kilo. Eastwards, the same track reaches the ruins of Husillos castle in 9 km—enough for a day’s hike and a lift back arranged with the one taxi firm that covers the comarca (€25, cash only, book before 20:00).

Birds, Binoculars and Absolute Quiet

The Cerrato is one of the last Spanish refuges for the great bustard, a turkey-sized bird whose males perform a foam-bath display each April. Dawn is non-negotiable: arrive at 06:30, park by the ruined farmhouse 2 km south of the village, and scan the fallow field with binoculars. You may also spot little bustard, black-bellied sandgrouse and Montagu’s harrier quartering the wheat. Bring a collapsible chair and patience; the birds are used to tractors, less so to people on foot. Stay on the track margins—farmers dislike tripod holes in their barley.

Nightfall offers a different show. At 800 m the air is thin and dry; on moonless weeks the Milky Way appears so bright it casts shadows. The village switches off its four street lamps at midnight, leaving only the church clock that strikes the wrong hour on purpose—an old custom to confuse the Devil, locals insist.

What to Eat and Where to Cook It

There is no restaurant, but the shop stocks tinned asparagus, UHT milk and the essentials of survival cooking. For anything fresh drive 18 km to Dueñas on Monday morning when the market fills the main square. Stalls sell lechazo (milk-fed lamb) in vacuum bags, spicy chorizo from neighbouring Segovia, and piquillo peppers that taste of wood smoke. Stock up, retreat to your rental, and fire up the brick barbecue that every cottage seems to possess.

If you insist on being served, Mesón El Cerrato in Tariego (12 km) does a three-course menú del día for €14 including wine. Expect roast peppers with anchovy, chickpea stew thick enough to stand a spoon in, and lamb so tender it detaches at the sight of a fork. They close Thursday and, unpredictably, when the cook’s granddaughter has a school recital.

Getting Stuck, Getting Out

Public transport is theoretical. There is a bus on Tuesday and Friday that links Palencia with Herrera de Valdecañas, 7 km away, but the walk involves a stretch of main road with no verge and drivers who treat the 90 km/h limit as cowardice. A hire car from Valladolid airport (75 minutes on the A-62) is the sane option; fill the tank in Palencia because village pumps closed years ago.

Accommodation is limited to three self-catering cottages, all converted from labourers’ houses. Prices hover round €80 a night for two, linen included. Heating is by pellet stove; instructions are in Spanish but the owner’s WhatsApp voice note is usually enough to prevent a cold dawn. Book well ahead for Easter and the September harvest fiesta when the population quadruples and someone inevitably parks a combine harvester in the square.

Winter brings sharp frosts and the occasional week of snow that melts into mud. Chains can be required on the VP-7034; if the forecast mentions “cierzo” (the freezing north wind) bring extra olive oil—skin dries faster than you expect at this altitude. Summer, by contrast, is a furnace: 35 °C by noon, silence by siesta, cicadas drilling the air. Sightseeing window: 08:00–11:00, then again after 18:00 when the earth releases its heat and the scent of broom drifts over the fields.

Last Light on the Plateau

Leave Hornillos just before sunset. Stand on the concrete water deposit above the village and the wheat rolls out like a threadbare carpet all the way to the horizon. A single light comes on in the church tower, then another in a kitchen. Somewhere a dog barks once and thinks better of it. You will probably be the only visitor within a five-kilometre radius, and tomorrow the tractor will still arrive at eleven. The plateau keeps its own timetable; the sensible response is to adjust your watch, buy the lentils, and accept that the silence is not an absence but the village’s principal offering.