Santo Tomé del Puerto

At 1,080 metres the air thins just enough to make the church bell carry further. When it strikes seven the sound rolls across the limestone roofs, past the bakery that’s already sold out of crusty loaves, and out over the dehesa where cattle graze among holm oaks. Santo Tome del Puerto doesn’t shout for attention; it lets the altitude do the talking.

The village name is literal. This is the pass, the “puerto”, where the old drovers’ road from the northern meseta drops toward Madrid. Roman legions, wool caravans and, more recently, weekend madrileños with mountain bikes have all slowed down here, looked at the horizon of pine-clad ridges and decided to carry on. A handful stay. Population hovers just above two hundred; in winter it feels lower, especially when snow closes the N-110 for an afternoon and the only bar shuts early because the owner’s gone to check his sheep.

Stone houses are shoulder-to-shoulder against the wind. Their wooden balconies are deep enough to store firewood for the entire season; chimneys are the width of a medieval shield because winters are long and central heating is still considered a bit fancy. Walk the single main street at dusk and you’ll smell oak smoke before you see it curling above the roofline. That scent is the village’s unofficial welcome sign.

The High Ground

Santo Tome sits on a natural balcony. From the tiny plaza outside the sixteenth-century church you look south across the Riaza gorge and north toward the even emptier province of Soria. The church tower acts as a landmark for hikers on the GR-88 long-distance path; if you’ve been tramping through pine and broom all morning, the stone beacon means coffee and a seat that isn’t a boulder.

There are no entrance fees, no audioguides, no gift shop. Inside, the nave is cool even in August, the floor uneven from centuries of boots. A side chapel keeps a painted wooden Virgin whose face has been re-touched so often she looks slightly surprised to still be here. Drop a euro in the box and the sacristan will switch on the lights for two minutes—long enough to notice that one column is Roman, another Visigothic, recycled builders always quick to borrow from the past.

Outside, the geography lesson continues. A five-minute stroll north-east brings you to the “Mirador de la Pedriza”, a slab of granite jutting over empty air. Vultures turn at eye level, riding the thermals that rise from the Duratón canyon fifteen kilometres away. On a clear day you can pick out the slate roofs of Sepúlveda, the nearest place with cash machines, pharmacies and a proper supermarket. Fill your wallet there before you head uphill; Santo Tome has neither ATM nor petrol station, and the nearest card machine lives in the bakery—when it feels like working.

Walking, Biking, Foraging

The village functions best as a base camp. Marked footpaths radiate like spokes: south to the abandoned hamlet of Arcones (two hours, mostly downhill), north through holm-oak pasture to the Ermita de la Soledad where shepherds once sheltered from snow, east along a Roman paved stretch that still bears cart-wheel ruts. Spring brings purple judas trees and the smell of thyme underfoot; October turns the broom bronze and the rowan berries flame red. Summer is viable if you start early—by eleven the sun is high enough to burn the back of your neck whatever the altitude.

Mountain bikers use the dirt road that loops past the stone circle of El Tesoro, a bronze-age grave site with 360-degree views and zero information boards. The climb is 300 metres of calf-burning gravel; the reward is a freewheel back to the village past wild asparagus patches. Stop to pick and the locals will tell you you’re late—April is the month, fried with eggs and nothing else.

Maps: the 1:25,000 “Sierra de Guadarrama” from the Centro Nacional de Información Geográfica covers the area. Download the PDF before you leave Madrid province; phone signal drops to a single bar the moment you dip into the valley.

Food That Knows the Season

There are two places to eat in the village itself, both within sight of the church. Restaurante Mirasierra occupies the old schoolhouse; its dining room still has the coat pegs. The menu is short and written on a blackboard because it changes with whatever the owner’s cousin has shot or grown. Expect judiones—giant butter beans stewed with ham bone—followed by lechal, milk-fed lamb roasted until the skin shatters like thin toffee. A portion feeds two hungry walkers; price is €18–22 per plate, wine included. They’ll do a half-portion of chips if you ask nicely, and the house white from Nieva is cold enough to numb the first sip.

Across the square, Bar Aurora opens only at weekends outside high summer. Her specialty is migas: breadcrumbs fried in olive oil with grapes and bits of chorizo. Order it with a caña of Mahou and you’ll get a free tapa of mature sheep’s cheese so salty it makes the beer taste sweet. Vegetarians should enquire early; the default seasoning is pork in one form or another.

Self-caterers can stock up in Sepúlveda on the way up: Mercadona for yoghurt and fruit, the Saturday market for honey and spicy chorizo that won’t leak in your rucksack. Most village rentals have fireplaces; bring matches and buy a net of oak logs from the petrol station at Villar de Saelices (€5, cash only). Lighting a fire in June feels absurd until the temperature drops to nine degrees at midnight.

When the Pass Closes

Winter is beautiful and occasionally brutal. Snow can arrive overnight and stay for a week; the council clears the main road by eight in the morning, but the side street to your rural cottage may remain white until the sun does the job. Chains or winter tyres are compulsory from November to March—police set up controls at the pass and the fine is €200 plus embarrassment.

Accommodation choices shrink to two: Mirasierra (open year-round, heating reliable, €70 double B&B) or Las Casas de Rosuero, stone cottages clustered round a threshing circle. The latter have beams, wood-burners and kitchens that smell of paprika from previous guests. Keys are left in a coded box; the welcome pack is a bottle of local red and instructions not to burn the furniture however romantic the impulse.

If the weather closes in, the village response is to stay put. Stock up on milk and tinned tomatoes, download a series, and watch the snow erase the road you arrived on. By morning the only marks will be deer tracks crossing the tarmac like dotted lines.

The Last Round

Santo Tome del Puerto will never feature on a coach tour. It has no castle, no souvenir shops, no evening entertainment beyond the cicadas and, on feast days, a brass band that plays in the plaza until the tuba freezes. What it offers instead is altitude clarity: the sense that Spain can still be spacious, quiet and indifferent to whether you turn up or not.

Come for the walking, stay for the smell of oak smoke, leave before the first snow blocks the pass—or don’t, and learn how quickly a village of two hundred people becomes a world of its own.