Castrillo de la Valduerna

The church bell strikes noon and the only other sound is a tractor grinding through third gear somewhere below the houses. Stand still for sixty seconds on Castrillo de la Valduerna's single stone street and you realise your heartbeat is travelling faster than the village itself. At nine hundred metres above sea level, on the last ripple of the Montes de León before the land flattens into the dusty meseta, time slips into a lower gear.

This is not a film set of rural Spain; it's the working article. Hay bales sit in driveways, onions dry under porch roofs, and the greeting from an elderly man leaning against his wooden balustrade is less "¡Hola, turista!" than "¿Qué hace una inglesa sola aquí?" – a question that expects an honest answer. The population hovers around 136, a figure that swells at weekends when grandchildren arrive from León and shrinks again when the school term starts.

Stone, Adobe and the Smell of Oak Smoke

Every house is built from what lay within donkey-range: ochre limestone for the walls, terracotta roof tiles sun-baked in village kilns, and adobe bricks mixed with straw from the same fields that feed the cattle. Timber corridors run along the upper storeys, their pine rails silvered by decades of wind that smells of resin and cold smoke. Look up and you'll spot carved heraldic shields dating from the seventeenth century, when petty nobility still collected rents in grain and chickens rather than euros.

The parish church squats at the highest point, its squat bell-tower more farmer's watch-tower than Gothic aspiration. The door is usually locked – the priest arrives from Villafranca del Bierzo twice a month – but push gently when you hear voices inside. Locals still gather on Thursdays to sweep the nave, light a single candle and argue about the price of lambs. Inside, the walls show Romanesque bones dressed up in eighteenth-century plaster, the architectural equivalent of a grandfather wearing his grandson's jacket.

Walk the length of the village in twenty minutes, or take an hour if you stop to read the stone plaques beside doorways: "Año 1926 – rebuilt after the fire" reads one, a reminder that chimneys here used to be wide enough for a child to climb and that thatch was replaced by tile only when someone died leaving enough cash to buy it.

Paths that Remember Shepherds

North of the last house the tarmac gives up. A stony track continues between dry-stone walls towards the watershed of the Valduerna River, following an old merino sheep drove that once reached as far as Extremadura. Spring brings a scatter of wild tulips and the acid yellow of broom; by July the grass is waist-high and crunches underfoot like shredded wheat. You can walk for three hours to the neighbouring village of Fabero without meeting anyone, apart from a shepherd on a quad bike who will raise two fingers from the handlebar in minimal salute.

Maps are optimistic. What looks like a bold red line on the 1:25,000 sheet often dissolves into two ruts between bramble hedges. GPS helps, but the safer compass is the stone cairns locals build at junctions: three stones means "keep straight", two topped with a flat slab warns of a dead-end at a threshing floor. Take water – the altitude and the dry air dehydrate faster than you'd expect – and wear something louder than beige; hunters operate on Sundays and boar are fair game.

Autumn colours arrive early at this height. By mid-October the oak and sweet chestnut have turned copper, and morning mist pools in the valley so that Castrillo appears to float like an island. Winter brings proper snow: the road from Ponferrada is periodically closed after heavy falls, and villagers keep a month's supply of lentils and chorizo in the pantry just in case. April can still deliver a frost that kills vegetable seedlings, so don't plan a gentle Easter ramble in shorts unless you enjoy goose-pimples.

How to Eat When the Bar is Your Kitchen

There is no pub, no café, no village shop. The last grocery closed in 2003 when Doña Pilar retired and nobody wanted to work seven-day weeks for the profit on a loaf of bread. Self-catering is therefore compulsory, which actually means shopping in La Bañeza before you drive up the mountain. The Sunday market there sells leeks the size of cricket bats and lamb shoulders so small you realise why "lechal" (milk-fed) is still a viable business.

If you rent one of the three village houses available through the regional tourism board, the kitchen will contain a wood-burning range and a note explaining where to buy chopped oak by the kilo (€4 a sack, leave money in the tin). Cook a cordero asado: rub the meat with garlic and smoked pimentón, surround it with potatoes cut small so they absorb the fat, and keep the fire low for three hours while you drink a bottle of Arribes del Duero bought for €7 in the petrol station. The smell drifts out of the chimney and across the lane; expect a knock from the neighbour offering a plate of walnut tart in exchange for a slice of crackling.

Dining out means a twenty-minute drive down to Bembibre, where Casa Martín serves cocido maragato in reverse order – meat first, chickpeas after – and will happily pack the leftovers for tomorrow's picnic if you ask. Book for Saturday lunch; half of León province seems to descend on the place for the €18 menú del día.

Getting Up and Getting Away

The nearest airport is León, 95 km away, but only Iberia flies there and prices can be eye-watering from London. Valladolid (two hours west) or Oviedo-Asturias (two hours north) give better deals, especially on the Stansted routes. Hire cars are non-negotiable: the bus from Ponferrada to La Bañeza stops at the crossroads 6 km below the village twice a day, but the climb is steep enough to make a taxi from there cost €20 each way.

Accommodation is limited to the three restored cottages mentioned above – book through the Patronato de Turismo de Castilla y León website. Expect stone floors, wool blankets that smell of lanolin, and Wi-Fi that works only when the wind isn't blowing from the north. Price hovers around €80 a night for two, including firewood and a bottle of local wine left by the door. There are no hotels, no swimming pools, and the nearest cash machine is in Fabero, 18 km away, so bring euros.

Castrillo de la Valduerna will never feature on a "Top Ten Hidden Gems" list because it refuses to perform for visitors. Turn up expecting rustic charm on tap and you'll leave hungry. Arrive prepared to cook, walk and listen, and you might finally understand why some Spaniards choose to stay put at nine hundred metres while the rest of the country chases the coast.