Cabezas de Alambre

The church tower rises first, visible for two kilometres across wheat stubble, then the whole village follows—stone walls the colour of dry biscuits, roofs the colour of rust, all sitting at 900 m with nothing taller than a holm oak for company. Cabezas de Alambre is that sort of place: you see it long before you reach it, and once you leave it keeps shrinking in the mirror until only the tower is left, then nothing.

The Plateau in Miniature

This is La Moraña, the northern wedge of the Castilian meseta where continental weather means business. Frost can bite well into April; July tops 30 °C but the air is so thin the heat dissipates the moment the sun dips. Bring a fleece for every season and do not trust the forecast farther than tomorrow. The altitude also explains the silence—sound travels across the cereal flats as if over water, so a single tractor at dawn carries to every bedroom.

The village itself holds barely 150 souls, down from perhaps five times that a century ago. Empty houses outnumber lived-in ones; some have been patched with breeze-block and bright paint, others slump quietly behind wrought-iron gates heavy enough to anchor a ship. There is no centre in the British sense—just a widening where the road forgets to narrow again. The ayuntamiento, a chemist that opens three mornings a week and Bar El Parque (one beer tap, one coffee machine, one telly permanently on mute) cluster round this accidental plaza. Order a café con leche and you will be asked if you want evaporated or fresh milk; either costs €1.20 and comes with a paper sachet of biscuits.

A Church, a Bakery, and the Horizon

The Romanesque-Mudéjar church keeps the key under a brick by the south door; lift it, let yourself in, remember to lock up after. Inside, the air smells of candle wax and damp stone; the font is 13th-century, the paintwork 1970s, the collection box 2022 (contactless donations accepted). Climb the tower—wood ladders, no handrail, mind your head—and the plateau rolls away like a calm sea. North-west lies Ávila, its walls a thin graphite line; south-east the Gredos peaks float on haze. Binoculars help, but the naked eye is enough to understand why locals call this “the balcony of La Moraña”.

There is no bakery; bread arrives Monday, Wednesday and Friday in a white van that toots at eleven. By eleven-fifteen the queue has dissolved and the bar is full of plastic bags balancing loaves on beer barrels. If you miss the van, drive ten minutes to El Barraco where a proper pastelería sells custard tarts still warm at 4 pm. The nearest cash machine is there too—Cabezas de Alambre surrendered its last bank in 2009.

Walking Without Waymarks

Footpaths exist only because farmers have always walked them. One leads west to Villanueva de Ávila (7 km, dead-flat, 1 h 30 min), another east to Santa María del Berrocal (5 km). Both cross wheat, then more wheat, then a patch of encinas where hoopoes clatter overhead. Stiles are absent; close every gate, keep dogs on leads, step aside for the occasional 4×4 rattling out to check a water trough. After rain the clay sticks to boots like wet cement; in July the dust is talcum-fine and finds its way into socks, cameras, sandwiches. Neither route is signed, but the trick is to keep the village tower in sight behind you and the next church tower ahead—navigation by bell towers instead of by smartphone.

Cyclists fare better: the county road that links the villages has so little traffic a rabbit can nap on the white line. Hire bikes in Ávila (CicloÁvila, €25 a day, helmet included) and you can string together a 40 km loop that never rises more than 100 m yet still feels expansive enough to qualify as an expedition.

Roast Lamb and the Pig Cycle

Food is meseta food: robust, wheat-fed, fire-based. The village social calendar still pivots on the matanza, that December weekend when one family kills a pig and everyone turns up to slice, salt and stir. You are unlikely to be invited unless you know someone, but the results appear all winter on bar counters—paper-thin slices of chorizo that taste of smoked paprika and cold mornings. The Sunday speciality at El Parque is cordero asado: half a milk-fed lamb, hacked through the bone, roasted in a wood oven whose temperature is judged by holding a hand inside for as long as the cook can bear. €18 a portion, including chips you will ignore, plus a tin plate of lettuce dressed only with salt and olive oil. Vegetarians get tortilla, eggs courtesy of hens that scratch behind the garage. Pudding is optional; most locals skip straight to coffee and a shot of orujo that smells of aniseed and disinfectant in equal measure.

Spring brings wild asparagus along the ditches; autumn delivers mushrooms if the rains have been kind. Picking is tolerated provided you ask the farmer first and steer clear of anything with white gills—this is not the place to test amateur mycology.

When to Come, How to Leave

April and late-September give you green wheat, mild afternoons and night skies so clear you can watch satellites cross from horizon to horizon. August is furnace-hot by midday; the village empties after breakfast and re-convenes at nine, when the shadows lengthen and the stone walls stop radiating heat. January is crisp, bright, often below –5 °C at dawn; if it snows the access road is cleared eventually, not immediately. Easter week sees the population triple as emigrants return; book then and you will share the silence with second cousins comparing pensions over brandy.

Getting here from the UK is straightforward: fly to Madrid, pick up a hire car, head north-west on the A-6 then the AP-51, leave at Arévalo, follow the CL-501 for 24 km, turn right at the wind turbine farm, continue until the tower appears. Total driving time from Terminal 4 is 90 minutes, tolls €10.65. Buses reach Arévalo twice daily from Estación Sur, but the onward service to Cabezas de Alambre was cancelled in 2011; without wheels you are marooned.

Accommodation is the catch. The village has no hotel, no casa rural, no Airbnb with Wi-Fi and waffle-maker. The nearest beds are in El Barraco (Hostal El Centro, €45 double, basic, clean) or back in Ávila where the 16th-century Palacio de los Velada does weekend deals at €89 including breakfast pastries the size of cricket balls. Most visitors day-trip, picnic on a bench beside the church and retreat before the bread van leaves again.

Leave before dusk and the tower dissolves into the plateau, first a silhouette, then a memory of stone against wheat. Cabezas de Alambre does not try to detain you; it simply resumes its conversation with the horizon, the same one it has been having since the Romans left and the wheat moved in.