Valleruela de Pedraza

The thermometer on the stone façade of the ayuntamiento read 9 °C at eleven on a late-May morning. Two hours earlier, down on the Segovia plain, it had been 22 °C. That 13-degree drop is the first thing most visitors register as the local road (the SG-232) climbs through the last bend of pine and emerges onto the high shelf where Valleruela de Pedraza sits at 1,130 m – higher than Ben Nevis’s summit, and only 50 minutes’ drive from the cathedral spires of Segovia.

Thin air, thick stone

Sixty-six inhabitants, one church, no shops. The village is small enough that you can walk from the threshing circles on the western edge to the livestock trough on the east in four minutes, yet the houses are built as if they expect to last a millennium. Limestone blocks the colour of old parchment fit together without mortar showing; door lintels carry the initials of farmers who died before the Civil War. Most roofs still carry original slabs of local pizarra, too heavy for modern roof-racks and too expensive to quarry now. The overall effect is less “chocolate-box” than “bunker-with-chimneys” – architecture designed for winter storms that can whip across the Sierra de Guadarrama at 100 km/h and dump 30 cm of snow before lunch.

Because of that altitude, seasons arrive early. Oak leaves turn the colour of burnt sugar in mid-October; the first frost usually appears the same night the Madrid opera season opens, whether that is 15 September or 1 October. By December the approach road is salted nightly, and the Guardia Civil close it to cars without chains roughly one weekend each winter. Summer, on the other hand, is a brief contract: July averages 26 °C at midday but drops to 12 °C after midnight, so the old women still bring shawls to the plaza at dusk while British visitors in shorts negotiate goose-pimples and another glass of tempranillo.

Walking without way-markers

There are no ticket booths, audio-guides or brown heritage signs. Instead, an A4 sheet sellotaped to the church door shows a hand-drawn map of three circular walks that start and finish by the stone cross. The shortest (5 km, 90 min) follows the Arroyo de Vadillo through a tunnel of ash and hazel, then climbs to an abandoned shepherd’s hut where swallows nest among the beams. The middle circuit (9 km, 2 h 30) crosses the pine ridge to the south; from the crest you can pick out the walled town of Pedraza ten kilometres north-west, its castle keep glinting like a pin on a cushion. The longest route (14 km) links with the Camino Natural del Valle del Cega and requires a picnic and a second water bottle – none of the streams are guaranteed drinkable in late summer.

Wildlife timetables are predictable. Wild boar descend to the fields at last light; walkers who leave before 07:00 usually see roe deer on the lower path, and the limestone cliffs half an hour west shelter a pair of griffon vultures re-introduced in 2018. Binoculars are worth the extra weight: golden eagles breed on the far side of the valley, and September brings passing honey-buzzards moving south from the Cantabrians.

Food that arrives by the boot, not the van

Valleruela itself has no restaurant, bar or shop. The nearest loaf of bread is 7 km away in Sotosalbos, the nearest cash machine 18 km back in Segovia. What the village does have is vegetable plots behind low walls, chickens that roam the lanes, and a municipal oven built in 1898 that still fires every Friday so residents can bake roast lamb (cordero asado) for the weekend. Visitors staying in one of the three holiday cottages are invited to slide their dish in alongside the locals; the cost is €3, payable into an honesty box that funds firewood.

For anything more elaborate you drive to Pedraza. The mesón on the north side of Plaza Mayor does a half-lamb portion for €24, enough for two hungry hikers and served with roast potatoes that mop up the wood-oven juices. Order a glass of Ribera del Duero crianza (€3.20) and a free tapa of crispy jamón appears automatically – the Segovian answer to a Yorkshire pub’s pork scratchings, only warmer. Vegetarians are not an afterthought: the same menu offers pimientos de Padrón fried in local olive oil and a sheep’s-milk torta del Casar so runny you topple it onto bread like fondue.

When the village doubles in size

The fiesta patronal falls on the weekend nearest 15 August. Population swells to roughly 250 as grandchildren, emigrants and second-home owners from Madrid roll up with tents and sleeping bags. A sound system the size of a small van is parked beside the church; Saturday night finishes with a disco that continues until the Guardia Civil remind the DJ of the 03:00 noise limit. Sunday morning begins with mass sung by a choir from Collado Hermoso, followed by a communal paella cooked in a pan two metres wide and stirred with a wooden oar. Tickets cost €10 and sell out by 11:00; outsiders are welcome but numbers are counted strictly because there is only one loo block (bring €1 coins).

If you prefer your silence unbroken, avoid the first weekend of July as well. That is when Pedraza stages its Noche de las Velas, lighting 30,000 oil-lamps along the walls. Coaches from Valladolid and Burgos clog the narrow approach road; traffic backs up to Valleruela’s cattle grid. The visual payoff is real – the walled town glows like a medieval film set – but you will queue 45 minutes to park and restaurant bookings require two weeks’ notice.

Beds, bolts and broadband

Accommodation within the village limits consists of three self-catering houses, two of them converted from 18th-century haylofts. Expect beams you cannot stand upright under, stairs you cannot climb sober, and Wi-Fi that flickers whenever the microwave turns on. Prices hover around €90 per night for two people, minimum stay two nights in winter, three in high summer. Heating is by pellet stove; instructions are in Castilian Spanish but the owner leaves a translated sheet that begins, “Fill the hopper to the red line, press the green button, retreat quickly.”

Mobile reception is patchy. Vodafone works on the plaza bench but not inside house number 14; O2 is the reverse. The British workaround is to walk 200 metres uphill to the cemetery – the highest point, where all four networks deliver four bars and you can watch the sun set over the Sierra de Urbión while WhatsApp-ing excuses for not replying earlier.

Leaving without a fridge magnet

There is no souvenir shop, no artisanal soap stall, no museum ticket to tuck into a scrapbook. What you take away is more fragile: the smell of pine resin at dawn, the echo of your boots in an empty lane, the realisation that Spain can still do “empty” at barely an hour from a provincial capital. Drive back down the switchback road and the temperature rises one degree every two minutes; by the time you reach the N-110 the car heater is off and the city feels close again. Turn around for a last look and Valleruela is already shrinking, a line of stone the colour of weathered bone pressed against the tree-line. It will be there next time – provided you remembered to book before the August fiesta, and provided the snowplough has cleared the pass.