Molinos de Duero

The church bell strikes seven and the only other sound is the Duero river pushing melt-water from the Urbión peaks past stone houses whose wooden balconies haven't changed since the grain mills gave this village its name. At 1,095 metres, Molinos de Duero is awake but empty – the baker's van won't appear for another hour and the single bar is still shuttered. This is Spain before the tourists arrived, and the locals would quite like to keep it that way.

A village that never learned to whisper "bienvenidos"

With 161 permanent residents, Molinos operates on a timetable outsiders need a week to decode. Bread appears at 8:30, disappears by 9:15. The shop opens when María returns from feeding her mother's chickens. The ATM works on Tuesdays and saints' days – bring euros. What saves the place from museum-piece quaintness is that nobody's performing for visitors; they're simply getting on with mountain life at 1,095 metres, where winter lasts six months and summer brings relief in the form of cool pine shade rather than souvenir stalls.

The architecture tells its own unvarnished story. Granite houses grow directly from the bedrock, their roofs weighted against winds that sweep down from the 2,228-metre Pico Urbión. Windows are small, doors are thick, and every chimney smokes from October to May. Walk the single main street at dusk and you'll smell oak firewood mixed with something sweeter – usually chestnuts roasting in the one restaurant that stays open year-round, Casa Cándido, where the menu is chalked in Spanish and the waiter will patiently translate "chuletón" as "very big steak, you share, yes?"

Walking into Machado's landscapes

Three kilometres above the village, the Duero begins properly – a modest trickle emerging from beneath a limestone cliff that locals insist has no bottom. Antonio Machado wrote about this dark lake in "La Tierra de Alvargonzález", though he never mentions the weekend reality: Spanish coach parties queuing for selfies beside glacial water so cold it numbs fingers in July. Visit on a Wednesday in October and you'll have the black lagoon to yourself, plus the bonus of beech forests turning copper and gold without a telephoto lens in sight.

The signed walk from the car park takes forty minutes if you're fit, an hour if you stop to watch wallcreepers flit across the cliff face. Proper boots help – the path is maintained but this is still a 1,800-metre mountain pass where weather arrives horizontally. Beyond the lake, tracks continue towards the Urbión summit, a five-hour round trip that starts in pine plantations and finishes on bare quartzite. The view stretches south across the Meseta, north towards La Rioja's vineyards; on clear days you can pinpoint Molinos as the cluster of slate roofs beside the river bend.

Winter transforms the same routes into cross-country ski trails when snow depth exceeds twenty centimetres – roughly December through March. The village guesthouse stores six pairs of snowshoes for guests, useful when drifts block the road to Soria and the only traffic is the baker's 4×4. Mobile signal dies completely during storms; Vodafone and EE give up around kilometre 35 on the CL-117, though Movistar sometimes holds on long enough to send a weather-warning text.

Food that doesn't photograph well but tastes like Spain used to

Forget tasting menus and foam. Molinos cooks like it's 1958 and the priest might drop by. Lunch at Casa Cándido means judías pintas – butter beans the size of ten-pence pieces simmered with chorizo that tastes of paprika rather than supermarket orange dye. The chuletón arrives raw on a board, 800 grams of bone-in rib-eye you sear yourself on a ceramic tile heated to 350°C. Order it "poco hecho" unless you enjoy leather, and specify "vino joven" if you want something approaching Rioja without the £35 price tag.

Vegetarians survive on patatas a la importancia – crispy potato spheres drowned in saffron sauce – and queso de oveja that's milder than Manchego, served with local honey that carries the scent of mountain thyme. Pudding is usually ignored; coffee comes with a shot of orujo that tastes of aniseed and disappears in one sharp gulp. The bill for two, including wine, rarely exceeds €45, partly because nobody here has heard of adding service charge.

Monday is gastronomic Russian roulette – both bars close, the shop sells only tinned tuna, and you'll be cooking on the guesthouse's two-ring hob. Stock up in Soria: the last proper supermarket before the mountain pass is a Carrefour on the Avenida Valladolid, 35 kilometres back towards reality.

Seasons that dictate everything

April brings migrant birds and the first terrace tables outside the bar, though you'll still need a jacket after 4 pm when the sun drops behind the Sierra. May explodes into green – entire hillsides of wild orchids and the sound of cuckoos that echo across valleys empty of everything except pine and boulder. This is the sweet spot: warm days, cold beers, empty trails, and hotel doubles at €60 including breakfast.

July and August mutate the village. Population swells to maybe 400 as Spanish families reclaim grandparents' houses. Children race bikes along streets wide enough for one donkey, not two Seat Ibizas. The restaurant requires booking; the river pool at Muriel de la Fuente, eight kilometres downstream, fills with inflatable crocodiles and fathers teaching daughters to swim. It's still not Benidorm – just Spain on holiday, speaking Spanish, eating Spanish, ignoring Google reviews.

September means mushrooms. The pine forests around Molinos produce níscalos (saffron milk caps) that locals guard with the intensity of Yorkshiremen protecting grouse moors. Picking requires a €10 daily permit from the Diputación in Soria; without it, fines start at €300. Guided forays cost €35 including breakfast and a lesson in telling boletus edulis from the version that destroys your liver. October adds chestnuts – roasted, boiled, or soaked in aguardiente until December.

November shuts everything. The bar reduces hours to Friday-through-Sunday. Snow tyres become essential rather than macho accessory. The village smells of woodsmoke and something deeper – the scent of a place that's survived because it never learned to compromise with passing trade. Book a room now and you'll get the entire guesthouse lounge to yourself, plus silence so complete you hear the river three streets away.

Getting here, getting out

From the UK, fly to Madrid, collect a hire car, head north on the A-2 for ninety minutes, then west on the N-234 towards Soria. Turn south on the CL-117 just after the Repsol station – last guaranteed fuel for 45 kilometres. The final stretch climbs through pine forests that smell like expensive gin; if the pass is closed (common December-March), the diversion adds an hour via El Burgo de Osma. Bilbao ferry plus two hours driving works too, though you'll still need that Soria fuel stop.

Leave Molinos the way you arrived – slowly, quietly, before the church bell reminds you that some places function perfectly well without TripAdvisor. The village won't notice your departure; it barely registered your arrival. That's precisely the point.