Torre de Esgueva

The morning bell tolls twice. Not for church, but because Ángel’s sheep have broken through the dry-stone wall again and are wandering down the single asphalt ribbon that counts as a high street. From the cemetery ridge you can watch the whole village respond: two women in housecoats step into Calle Real 2, a terrier erupts from a tractor shed, and the shepherd himself appears, crook in one hand, mobile phone in the other. Sixty inhabitants, one problem, zero anonymity. This is Torre de Esgueva, province of Valladolid, 800 m above the cereal plains of northern Castile.

The Paramo Classroom

The name translates literally as “Tower of the Esgueva”, a reminder that a crumbling medieval watch-tower once guarded the spring where the river of the same name is born. The tower is gone, but the paramo remains – a high, wind-scoured plateau that feels closer to the sky than to any city. In April the fields are patch-worked green and mauve; by July they have bleached to the colour of digestive biscuits. The air is thin enough that a brisk walk from the church to the grain silo can leave a Londoner light-headed; nights, even in midsummer, demand a fleece.

There is no interpretative centre, no souvenir stall, no ticket booth. What Torre offers is a lesson in scale. The entire urban nucleus fits inside a single postcode: adobe houses the colour of wet sand, a seventeenth-century parish church with a barn-owl roost in the bell tower, and a subterranean honeycomb of bodegas – tiny cave-cellars hacked into limestone where locals once kept wine at 14 °C year-round. Many are padlocked now, but if you ask at number 14 (look for the house with the ox-shoe nailed above the door) Marisol will haul up the iron latch and show you the soot-blackened hearth where her grandparents roasted peppers after the harvest.

Walking Without Way-marks

Official hiking routes stop 25 km east in Peñafiel, and that is precisely the point. Here you walk on farm tracks used only by tractors and wildlife. A lazy circuit begins at the livestock fountain on the western edge of the village; follow the gravel lane south-east for 1.5 km until the cereal gives way to a narrow ravine where poplars shiver and nightingales rehearse. The path dips, crosses an irrigation ditch by a concrete slab, then climbs to a bluff that reveals the whole Esgueva basin – an ocean of rolling stubble all the way to the Burgos frontier. Allow two hours, carry 1 litre of water per person, and remember that shade is theoretical; the only tree big enough to sit under is a solitary holm oak 800 m from the start.

In autumn the same tracks turn into a mycological lottery. Locals set out at dawn with their cuchillos de setas and return at noon with wicker baskets of níscalos (saffron milk-caps) and rovellones (blewits). There are no guided forays, so unless you can tell a gírgola from a death cap, tag along with someone who can. The barter economy is still alive: a handful of mushrooms may be swapped for a jar of home-rendered manteca de cerdo colour-paprika.

What Passes for Nightlife

Evenings begin when the swifts stop screaming. By 21:30 the sky has drained to pewter, and the first bats flicker around the street-lamp that runs on a timer to save the council €37 a month. The only public place still open is the sports pavilion – a prefab aluminium shed built in 2006 with a EU subsidy – but on Wednesdays it doubles as the village cinema. Entrance is free, popcorn is non-existent, and the film arrives on a USB stick driven over from Valladolid. If you crave something stronger than the tap water, bring your own rioja; drinking in the street is legal, and the stone bench outside the post office catches the last of the sun.

On 10 August the population quadruples. The fiesta honouring San Lorenzo lasts thirty-six hours and includes a paella popular cooked in a pan 1.4 m wide, a foam party for children powered by a hired generator, and a disco that winds up at 05:00 when the mayor’s husband finally falls asleep on the merengue. Accommodation inside the village is impossible unless you have cousins; the nearest beds are at Casa Rural Valle Esgueva, 12 km south-west down the CL-610. Expect to pay €70 for a double room, breakfast of tostada con tomate included, and book before Easter if you want the terrace overlooking the cereal sea.

Seasons and How They Shut Doors

Winter arrives early at this altitude. The first frost usually lands on 20 October; by December the paramo is a monochrome plate and the wind can knife through Gore-Tex. The road is gritted only as far as the municipal boundary, and if snow settles the bus from Valladolid stops running. This is when the village regresses to its hard core: grandparents, dogs, and the one bar that keeps the heater on for three customers. Conversely, late May turns the surrounding fields into an accidental garden of crimson poppies and blue alcandías (corn-cockle), and the temperature hovers in the low twenties – perfect for walking before the cereal harvest kicks up its dust cloud.

Summer itself is dry but rarely suffocating; 28 °C feels cooler when the paramo breeze is factored in. Still, July and August are mosquito-free only because there is no standing water for 15 km. Carry sunscreen: UV is fierce at 800 m, and buying after-sun means a 40-minute drive to Peñafiel.

Eating Without a Menu

There is no restaurant, no café, no corner shop. Your options are:

1. Bring supplies from Arroyo de la Encomienda (Mercadona on the A-62, 35 minutes).
2. Ask ahead for comida casera. Modesta, who keeps chickens behind the church, will roast a cordero lechal for four if you give her 24 hours’ notice. Price: €18 a head, wine included, payment in cash on the kitchen table.
3. Time your visit with the jornadas micológicas in nearby Serrada (third weekend October) where local women dish out sopa de setas and chuletón in a marquee for €12.

Vegetarians can survive on judiones (giant butter beans) from La Seca and peppers roasted over vine cuttings, but vegans should pack protein bars; the concept still confuses most households.

Getting Here, Getting Away

No train comes within 30 km. From Valladolid-Campo Grande bus station, line 260 departs at 14:15 Monday-to-Friday, reaches Torre at 15:32, and turns around immediately. There is no Sunday service. A single ticket costs €4.75; buy on board and carry coins because the driver’s float is tiny. By car, leave the A-62 at junction 104, follow the CL-610 for 19 km, then turn left at the sign that reads “Torre de Esgueva 8”. Petrol is available 24 h at a self-service station in Boecillo; after that the pumps are closed on Saturdays after 14:00.

If you miss the evening bus, the nearest hotel is in Quintanilla de Onésimo, 22 km west – functional, over-lit, and haunted by sales reps touring the Ribera. Better to phone Casa Rural Valle Esgueva and plead; they have been known to send a nephew with a 4×4 for an extra €25.

Leaving Without Luggage

You will not tick world-class sights off a list here. What you might collect instead is a sense of how thin the membrane between past and present can be: bread ovens still heated with pruned vine wood, a dialect where the sibilant “s” is spoken like a whisper, a community small enough to recognise a stranger’s footprint in the dust. Come if you are content with self-reliance, if silence feels like company, and if you remember to close every gate behind you – someone’s harvest depends on it.