Valdevacas de Montejo

The church bell hasn't rung for Sunday service in three months. Not because the faithful have abandoned Valdevacas de Montejo, but because there simply aren't enough voices to form a congregation. At 1,126 metres above sea level, where Castilla y León nudges towards Soria, this stone hamlet houses just twenty-nine permanent residents—fewer people than you'd find queuing for coffee on a Monday morning in any British market town.

The Arithmetic of Silence

Drive northeast from Segovia for an hour and a half, past wheat fields that shimmer like the North Sea in a gale, and you'll understand why the Spanish call this region España vaciada—the emptied Spain. The road climbs through pine plantations before dropping into a shallow valley where Valdevacas sits, its terracotta roofs huddled against a wind that tastes of thyme and cold stone. There's no dramatic reveal, no Instagram-worthy viewpoint. The village simply appears, as if the moorland grew tired of being empty and decided to sprout houses.

What strikes first-time visitors isn't what's here, but what isn't. No petrol station, no cash machine, no bar serving tapas at midday. The nearest supermarket stands seventeen kilometres away in Maderuelo, a drive that takes twenty-five minutes on roads that ice over from November to March. Mobile reception flickers between one bar and none; download offline maps before you leave the A-1 motorway because Google will abandon you somewhere between kilometre markers 105 and 123.

The village architecture tells its own story of gradual retreat. Stone houses with wooden balconies lean together for warmth, their ground-floor stables now converted into garages for dusty Renault Clios. Adobe walls crumble where families once kept chickens; corrugated iron patches holes where winter storms punched through. Walk the single main street at 3 pm in February and you'll hear nothing but your own footsteps echoing off granite doorways painted ox-blood red.

Walking Through Europe's Quiet Corner

This isn't hiking country in the Lake District sense. There are no waymarked trails, no National Trust tea rooms awaiting at walk's end. Instead, centuries-old livestock paths web across the paramera—the high moorland—connecting Valdevacas to similarly shrunken neighbours like Gallegos de Montejo and Fuentepiñel. These tracks, worn smooth by merino sheep and medieval traders, offer walkers something increasingly rare in Europe: genuine solitude.

Strike southwest towards the Cega River and you'll cross three kilometres of cereal fields where larks provide the only soundtrack. The path dips through a shallow gorge where wild boar have rooted up the banks, then climbs onto a plateau that reveals why locals call this landscape the "Spanish Mesopotamia." To the north, the River Eresma cuts through wheat towards Valladolid; southwards, the Duratón carves cliffs through limestone country towards Segovia. On clear days—common at this altitude—the Sierra de Guadarrama appears as a jagged silhouette fifty kilometres distant.

But these walks demand respect. Summer temperatures hit 35°C with zero shade; winter brings snow that can trap vehicles for days. There's no mountain rescue service, no cosy pub to shelter in. Tell someone your route. Carry water, even for short walks—the nearest tap might belong to a farmer who lives five kilometres away and views strangers with justified suspicion.

The Gastronomy of Making Do

Food here follows the Castilian philosophy of using what's available and preserving the rest. In Valdevacas itself, nothing opens to serve meals; the last grocer closed when its proprietor died in 2018. Instead, locals cook at home using recipes that would seem familiar to a medieval peasant: cocido stew that stretches a single chicken across three days' meals, chorizo that hangs from kitchen rafters developing white mould like expensive French cheese.

Drive to Maderuelo for lunch at Asador la Villa, where cochinillo—milk-fed lamb roasted until the bones become edible—costs €22 per portion. The meat tastes mild, almost sweet, nothing like the mutton that puts off British palates. Order sopa castellana, a garlic and bread broth fortified with paprika, and you'll understand why Spanish farmers consider this peasant food superior to anything served in Michelin-starred Madrid.

Buy supplies in Riaza before arriving: crusty bread that stays fresh for exactly one day, sheep's cheese wrapped in esparto grass, chorizo that actually contains pork rather than the industrial fillers found in British supermarkets. The village's single remaining shopkeeper—María Angeles, who opens her front room as a makeshift store on Thursday mornings—sells honey produced by her cousin's hives three kilometres away. It's thick as treacle, tasting of rosemary and thyme, nothing like the bland supermarket variety.

When Twenty-Nine People Celebrate

San Pedro's feast day arrives on 29 June, transforming the village overnight. The population swells to perhaps 120 as descendants return from Madrid, Barcelona, even London. Suddenly the silent streets echo with children's voices; elderly men play cards beneath the church portal while women prepare paella in pans big enough to bathe toddlers. A brass band—borrowed from Sepúlveda—plays pasodobles as locals dance on flagstones worn smooth by centuries of similar celebrations.

But arrive two days later and you'll find only cigarette butts and discarded serviettes to prove anything happened. The exodus begins before dawn on 1 July: cars loaded with grandchildren who'll return next summer, perhaps, if university schedules and job permits allow. By mid-afternoon Valdevacas has shrunk back to its essential core: retirees who've chosen altitude over ambition, neighbours who share tools and Sunday roasts because there's nobody else to borrow from.

The village's future hangs in such delicate balance. One death, one family deciding to sell their ancestral home to city weekenders, and the arithmetic becomes impossible. Already the primary school stands padlocked, its playground equipment rusting gently. The medical clinic opens just one morning weekly; anything serious requires a 45-minute drive to Segovia's hospital along roads that claimed three lives last winter.

Yet there's dignity here that prosperous British villages—with their gastropubs and boutique hotels—have lost. Nobody in Valdevacas sells artisan chutney or converts barns into Airbnbs. The place remains stubbornly itself: a community that endures through stubbornness rather than strategy, where neighbours still divide firewood according to who felled which tree, where the church bell will ring again come September, even if only eight people hear it.