Prádena

The cave mouth yawns at 1,119 metres, exhaling air that has stayed at eight degrees since the last ice age. Stand on the steel platform and the draught hits your face like the back-door breeze from a supermarket chiller. This is the Cueva de los Enebralejos, five kilometres outside Prádena, and the reason most strangers bother to climb the SG-232 at all.

Stone, Wood and Winter Breath

Prádena’s houses are built from what lies underneath them: grey granite hacked out of the Guadarrama, roofed with cinnamon-coloured Arabic tile that clatters in high wind. Barely 500 people live here year-round, a number that shrinks when the first snow parks on the pass and swells again when Madrid families reclaim their weekend cottages in July. The streets form a single loose grid above the Ciguiñuela, a stream too modest to call a river but loud enough to hear from the church square at night. Look south and the carpet of pines drops away; look north and the stone crest of the Sierra de Guadarrama rises like a wall built to keep out the meseta’s heat.

Winter arrives early and stays late. Night frosts are possible well into May, and the petrol station at the entrance to the village sells snow chains beside the ice-cream freezer. Summer, on the other hand, is dry and thin. Even in August villagers keep a fleece on the back of the chair; the sun burns but the air stays cool, perfect for walking the old drove roads that ribbon through oak and juniper.

A Cave that Refuses to be a Sideshow

Guides begin every tour of the Enebralejos with a warning: “Touch nothing, or your fingers become part of the exhibit.” Water still drips, calcite still grows, and the slow chemistry has been busy since Neolithic shepherds first lowered their dead through the roof. Skeletons, pottery shards and red-ochre handprints are left exactly where archaeologists found them; electric light is kept low so the formations keep their candle-wax colours rather than the usual garish floodlit orange.

Tours leave on the hour from a hut that looks like a garden shed. There is no online booking; turn up at ten to or wait another sixty minutes. Entry is €9, €6 for children, and the walk through the chambers lasts fifty minutes. English-language visits can be arranged if you ring the number taped to the door before 7 p.m. the previous day; otherwise expect rapid Castilian Spanish and polite nods when you fail to spot the difference between stalactite and stalagmite.

Outside, a short forestry track climbs to a view-point where griffon vultures ride the thermals. Bring binoculars and a jacket—the temperature drop when clouds cover the sun is sudden and theatrical.

Where Lunch Starts at Three and Ends at Six

Prádena keeps the Castilian timetable without apology. Shops reopen at five, not two; the single cash machine often runs dry on Saturday evening, and nothing moves on Sunday afternoon except the bells of San Martín. The church itself is a stripped-down Romanesque fortress, its belfry patched after lightning in 1974. Inside, the retablo shows Saint Martin cutting his cloak for a beggar while local worthies look on in 17th-century lace collars. The paint is flaking, but the colours—mulberry, vermilion, lamp-black—still sing in the candle-scented dusk.

Food is mountain-plain: roast suckling lamb that tastes of thyme and oak smoke, judiones the size of conkers swimming with chorizo, and tostón, a nursery pud made from honeyed breadcrumbs topped with ice-cream that melts faster than you can spoon it up. Bar La Portada serves a three-course menú del día for €14 including wine from DO Vinos de Madrid; the red is light enough to drink at lunch and still walk the forestry loop afterwards. Vegetarians survive on tortilla and salads; vegans should pack sandwiches.

Tracks for Boots, Bikes and Snowshoes

A web of footpaths fans out from the upper end of the village. The easiest is the PR-SG-22 way-marked loop to El Bardal, a 5 km stroll through Scots pine to a string of wooden footbridges and a waterfall that actually carries water after spring rain. The path is pushchair-friendly and mercifully free of the mountain-bike ruts that scar wider tracks.

Harder options climb west to the Puerto de la Quesera, an old drove pass where merchants once funnelled Merino sheep toward Segovia. The ascent is 400 metres of steady grind, rewarded by views across a saw-edge skyline that, on hazy days, could pass for the Dolomites. Red-billed choughs wheel overhead; roe deer watch from the undergrowth, ears swivelling like radar dishes.

Mountain bikers use the forestry roads that web the pine slopes. Gradient notices are painted on rocks by local riders: “12 % next 1.2 km—¡ánimo!” The surfaces vary from dust to fist-sized rubble; carry tubes because thorn punctures are common and shade is scarce. In snow season the same tracks become raquetas routes. Snow falls erratically—some winters none, others two metres—so phone the cave hut for conditions rather than trust generic weather sites.

When to Come, When to Stay Away

April and May turn the valley emerald and fill the cave drip-trays; wildflowers include cobalt-blue Gentiana verna and the odd clump of wild daffodil. Migrant birds pass through, and daylight lingers long enough for evening walks without a torch. September repeats the trick with golden light and mushroom season—ask in the bar which tracks are open for boletus picking; permits are not required but landowners get tetchy if you wander into fenced oak groves.

August is hot on the plain but merely warm here; the village doubles in size at weekends and the cave tours sell out by noon. Book accommodation early or stay in Segovia and drive up—though the 55 km mountain road feels longer than the map admits, especially when stuck behind a grain lorry on the corkscrew descent.

November brings the fiestas of San Martín: roast chestnuts, young wine from the barrel, and a procession that takes the saint’s effigy around the square while a brass band plays marches slightly off-key. It is the best moment to see Prádena pretending to be busier than it is, but hotel beds are non-existent—locals lend spare rooms to returning cousins, and strangers sleep in nearby Pedraza.

Parting Shot

Prádena will never elbow its way onto a “Top Ten Spanish Villages” list. It offers one outstanding cave, a handful of decent walks, and the pleasure of watching Castile carry on regardless. Come for the geology, stay for the lamb, and leave before the silence starts feeling like reproach. If the cash machine swallows your card, remember you were warned; if the cloud closes in, wait ten minutes—it usually lifts, revealing the sierra exactly where it was when you arrived, only whiter with snow.