Tabanera de Valdavia

The church bell in Tabanera strikes noon, yet only two cars sit beside the stone trough in the square. One belongs to the village baker who drives in from Saldaña; the other to a couple from Leeds who thought Google Maps had sent them down the wrong farm track. They hadn’t. At 980 metres above sea level, the tarmac simply thins out, hedgerows turn to dry-stone walls, and the meseta’s endless wheat finally ripples into oak-studded hills. This is the southern edge of the Cordillera Cantábrica, and the air already tastes of resin and cold springs.

A village that keeps its own time

Twenty-five residents are listed on the register, though on a weekday in March you’ll count fewer doorways with smoke curling from the chimney. Stone houses, their wooden balconies painted the colour of ox-blood, press close to the single lane. Adobe patches show where owners have recycled the earth-coloured bricks first baked by Moorish workmen eight centuries ago. Nothing is staged for visitors; the elderly man clipping dead geraniums is simply tending the balcony his grandfather built. If you ask directions he’ll point with the secateurs, then return to the plant. Silence, when it comes, feels contractual.

That silence can startle British ears used to the low hum of a nearby A-road. Stand still and you’ll catalogue a short inventory: wind turning the weathervane on the espadaña, a dog on the Valdavia road, the click of a cyclist changing gear as she crawls up the final ramp from Cervera de Pisuerga. Mobile reception flickers in and out; EE drops to SOS just past the fountain. Download an offline map before you leave the CL-615 or you’ll be navigating by haystacks.

Walking the border between plain and mountain

Footpaths leave the village as if continuing front gardens uphill. The most straightforward route follows the GR-1 long-distance trail west toward Santibáñez de la Peña: 11 km of farm track through holm-oak and broom, rising gently to a ridge that lets you see both halves of Castilla y León. Red-and-white waymarks appear every kilometre or so—enough to reassure, not enough to crowd the landscape. In May the verges are loud with cow-wheat and the last of the primroses; by mid-July everything has retracted into pale grass and the shade feels precious.

Early risers are rewarded. At dawn the valleys fill with a cool, milky light that photographers call “alpenglow on the cheap”. A red kite will usually mew overhead before you’ve tightened your boot laces; if you’re lucky, a black-shouldered kite hovers above the newly-cut barley. Bring binoculars but leave the bird-book Latin at home—locals simply call the birds “milano” and “elanjito”, and the conversation moves on to rainfall, lamb prices, or whether the track to Villanueva de la Torre is passable after last week’s storm.

Cyclists use the same web of lanes. A satisfying 40-km loop drops from Tabanera down to the Valdavia river, climbs through beech woods above San Cebrián, then regains the village via an old drove road used until the 1960s for moving sheep to winter pasture. Gradient rarely exceeds eight per cent, but the surface alternates between immaculate asphalt and fist-sized gravel—road-bike tyres are fine if you’re confident, hybrids happier. You will meet more tractors than cars, and the driver will lift one finger from the steering wheel in salute. Return before 14:00; after lunch the wind freshens and can fling you sideways across the plateau.

What passes for lunch

There is no shop, no ATM, and, unless you arrive on the weekend of the annual fiesta, no pop-up craft stall. The single bar opens at 10:00 for coffee, might serve tortilla if the delivery van from Saldaña has remembered the eggs, and closes when the owner’s grandson comes to fetch her. Plan accordingly. British favourites appear in adapted form: the cheese is a firm ewe’s-milk queso curado, milder than Manchego if you ask for semicurado, while lechazo—milk-fed lamb roasted in a wood-fired brick oven—delivers the same delicate sweetness as a Welsh spring lamb but with crackling so thin it shatters like a brandy snap. A half-kilo portion looks excessive until you taste the first slice; order a green salad for appearances and you’ll still leave happily overstretched.

Water bottles can be refilled at the stone fuente on the edge of the village. The spout issues mountain-cold water with a slight iron tang; locals swear it cures hangovers, though they also admit the secret is walking uphill to reach it. If you prefer wine, pick up a bottle of fruity Tierra de León in Saldaña’s supermarket for under six euros—no corkscrew required, it comes with a twist-off cap designed for picnic practicality.

Seasons measured by firewood and storks

April brings returning white storks; their nests balance precariously on electricity poles along the approach road, and the clattering of bills echoes off stone at dusk. May is green, scented, and usually empty—Spanish schools are still in session, northern Europeans haven’t yet arrived. Temperatures hover around 18 °C at midday, plunge to 5 °C the moment the sun slips behind the Sierra del Brezo, so pack a fleece even if breakfast was taken in shirtsleeves.

High summer turns the countryside khaki, but the village briefly repopulates. Grandchildren of emigrants who left for Bilbao in the 1970s arrive with car boots full of supermarket provisions and a determination to sit outside until after midnight. Conversation switches from Castilian Spanish to Basque; someone produces a guitar; the bar stays open until the last cider bottle caps are counted. Visitors are welcome, though introductions are slow—expect to be asked which part of “Inglaterra” you come from and whether it’s true you drink beer warm.

Autumn is the photographer’s jackpot. Oak and beech woods on the higher slopes catch fire in sequence, and morning mist pools in the Valdavia gorge like milk in a saucer. By mid-October the grain stubble has been burnt off, adding a faint charcoal note to the air. This is also mushroom season; locals head for the beech groves at dawn with knives and wicker baskets. Tag along only if you can identify a níscalo (saffron milk-cap) from a death cap—landowners are possessive about their patches and hospital beds in Palencia are 45 minutes away.

Winter is not picturesque. Atlantic storms ride inland, temperatures drop to –8 °C, and the CL-615 can close for hours under driven snow. If you do arrive in January you’ll have the village to yourself, plus the company of the baker’s van if the driver judges the road safe. Firewood is stacked higher than doorframes; smoke drifts horizontally. The experience is authentic, bracing, and only advisable with snow chains and a full tank of petrol. Fill up in Saldaña—there is no fuel for 25 km in any direction.

Beds beyond the last streetlamp

You cannot sleep inside Tabanera itself unless you’ve booked one of the anonymous casas rurales whose keys are left under a flowerpot and whose Wi-Fi password is taped to the router. They are inexpensive—around £60 a night for a two-bedroom cottage—but self-catering means exactly that: bring coffee, olive oil, even loo roll. The nearest staffed reception is the Hotel Doña Urraca in Saldaña, fifteen minutes away beside a disused railway line that once carried León coal to Santander. Rooms are warm, staff speak enough English to explain the breakfast buffet, and the restaurant will grill your lechazo to order if you phone ahead.

An alternative is Posada Real de Santa Gadea, twenty minutes east in Osorno la Mayor. The 17th-century manor house has been converted into a small hotel with underfloor heating—welcome after a January hike—and a wine list that roams across Castilla y León. Weekends fill with wedding parties from Palencia; request a courtyard room if you value quiet over Baroque plasterwork.

Leaving without the souvenir

There is nothing to buy, and that is the point. You leave with dust on your boots, the faint smell of oak smoke in your hair, and the realisation that Spain still contains places where siesta is observed because work demands it, not because a heritage handbook recommends authenticity. Drive back to the CL-615, switch your phone to roaming, and the twenty-first century reassembles itself in a scatter of WhatsApp pings. The roadsigns to Madrid and Santander reappear, faster, louder, brighter. In the rear-view mirror Tabanera shrinks to a notch on the ridge, indistinguishable from the rock until the sun catches the bell-tower’s tin roof and flashes once, like a lighthouse dipping its light. You won’t need to return, but the memory of that flash will surface the next time someone mentions “empty Spain” and you’ll know exactly how full emptiness can feel.