Belena

The church bell tolls twice at noon, and every dog in Belena answers. From the single café terrace, chairs scrape as farmers check pocket watches older than the clientele in most British pubs. Nothing else moves. The main road, trickling south towards Ciudad Rodrigo, lies quiet enough to hear wheat husks brushing against each other in the breeze.

Belena sits 760 m above sea level on Spain’s northern plateau, far enough from the Duero valley to feel the full force of continental weather. Frost can bite well into April; August regularly tops 35 °C. Whoever christened Castilla’s landscape a “plain” had never walked the rippling campos that surround the village – the grain sea rolls like the Atlantic, only golden and crackling dry. Stone walls built during the repoblación centuries ago still divide holdings; poplars mark dried stream beds that flash-flood for one afternoon every other year. It is ordinary country, nothing dramatic, yet the vastness makes a half-day’s stroll feel like crossing a prairie.

A slow circuit takes roughly forty minutes. Start at the 16th-century arched entrance, now hemmed in by later houses, and follow Calle Real past sandstone doorways carved with the dates 1703, 1847, 1931. Limewash peels in parchment curls; geraniums in olive-oil tins add the only deliberate colour. Halfway along, the parish church swells above the roofs, its tower a handy landmark for drivers approaching on the SA-215. Inside, the alfarje ceiling is painted mud-brown, the colour of the soil outside – practicality trumped baroque ornament here. Mass still draws a respectable crowd on Sundays, though weekday services rely on six widows and the retired blacksmith who rings the bell.

Outside again, the lane narrows to a cobbled gutter wide enough for a single tractor tyre. At the far end, an iron bench faces west over the threshing floors. Sit long enough and someone will amble over to practise English learned while picking strawberries in Kent: “You come for the birds, yes? Cranes pass in March.” They are not wrong; the surrounding dehesa and cereal steppe form part of a migratory corridor stretching down to Extremadura. Binoculars will pick up hen harriers, black-shouldered kites, even a foraging eagle if the farmer opposite has just turned his stubble.

Eating what the fields give back

Belena keeps no gastro-boutiques, just two bars that open when the owners wake. Order a caña before 11 a.m. and you’ll get a free tapa of morcilla crumbled over farmhouse bread; after 11, the dish becomes “pincho” and costs €2.30. Both bars buy suckling lamb from a cooperative in nearby Saelices el Chico; Thursday is asado day, when the wood-fired oven stays lit from dawn. Expect to pay €14 for a quarter-kilo portion, plus chips and a peppery house Rioja. Vegetarians can request pimientos de Fresno, long green peppers fried and sprinkled with coarse salt – grown ten kilometres away, delivered in the boot of a SEAT whose suspension collapsed years ago.

The village shop doubles as the bakery. Bread emerges at 13:00 sharp; arrive at 13:15 and you’ll queue behind mothers shouting children’s names, grandparents clutching ration cards from the 1960s (still honoured for sentimental reasons), and the English couple who bought the crumbling casa on Plaza Nueva. They’ll tell you the sourdough is “just like in Borough Market.” No one disagrees – politeness is cheaper than advertising.

When to come, and when to stay away

Spring breaks late; by the final week of April the fields glow acid-green and temperatures hover around 18 °C – perfect for walking the unmarked farm tracks that radiate towards Villar de Samaniego. Autumn is equally mild, with scarlet poppies threading the stubble and threshing dust finally settled. These shoulder seasons also coincide with the village fiestas: San Marcos on 25 April brings a livestock fair where two dozen yearling bulls parade past the church; the Fiestas Patronales in mid-September feature Saturday-night bingo with a top prize of a jamón weighing more than some toddlers. Both events double the population for forty-eight hours; reserve the single guest-house early or you’ll bed down in Salamanca, forty minutes’ drive east.

Summer, on the other hand, is relentless. From mid-July to late August the mercury climbs past 35 °C by noon and the wheat crackles like Rice Krispies. Afternoons belong to siesta, not sightseeing; even the swifts vanish to somewhere cooler. Winter is the opposite extreme: blue skies, sharp wind, and the knowledge that the surrounding plateau sits high enough to collect snow when Atlantic storms slip across Portugal. If the white stuff falls, the SA-215 becomes impassable for artics; locals dust off 4x4s and still make it to Mass, but tourists in hire cars are politely advised to park at the junction and walk the final kilometre.

Walking without way-marks

Belena lies on no GR path, and the council has never bought a colour printer for signage. That suits many visitors. Buy the 1:50 000 “Sierra de Francia – Sierra de Béjar” map from Salamanca’s kiosk opposite the Plaza Mayor, or simply ask at the bar: Paco keeps dog-eared photocopies showing three circular routes. The shortest (7 km) crosses the Arroyo de Valdeloso and returns via an abandoned stone sheepfold; you’ll share the path with a farmer on a Honda 90 who waves as he rattles past. The longest (16 km) skirts the solar farm installed in 2021 and climbs to the Ermita de la Virgen del Campo, a plaster-less hermitage with views west towards Portugal. Take two litres of water in summer; the only fountain dried up during last year’s drought.

Cyclists need sturdy tyres. The farm tracks are hard-packed but corrugated by tractors; a suspension fork saves dental work. Road riders can loop south-east towards Masueco on virtually traffic-free asphalt, then descend the Duero gorge for a riverside coffee before grinding back uphill.

Night sounds, no streetlights

Darkness arrives quickly once the sun drops behind the Sierra de Gata. Belena has three streetlights; the mayor turns them off at midnight to save the municipal coffers. What follows is black enough for the Milky Way to cast a shadow. Sit on the church steps and you’ll hear little owls trading calls, the creak of someone tightening window shutters, and, if the wind is right, the faint throb of discoteca bass from Villarino de los Aires, ten kilometres south. The village’s own bar shuts at 22:30; after that, silence is the only soundtrack.

That hush is increasingly the commodity visitors pay for – though actual payment remains refreshingly low. A coffee still costs €1.20, a plate of migas €6, and the two-bedroom guest-house rented by the English couple charges €55 a night, breakfast of tostada and local jam included. They insist on cash; the nearest ATM is in Lumbrales, 12 km away, and it swallowed someone’s card last Tuesday.

The fine print

Getting here without a car demands patience. There is one weekday bus from Salamanca at 14:15, returning at 06:45 next morning – handy if you fancy an evening of stargazing and a dawn stroll, less so for a flexible itinerary. Trains serve Salamanca from Madrid in 1 h 40 min on the Alvia service; advance fares start around £22 on Ouigo’s low-cost route, £32 with Renfida. Hiring a vehicle at the station is straightforward; the drive to Belena takes 45 minutes on the A-62, then country roads where you’ll meet more tractors than cars.

Phone signal is patchy inside stone houses; most cafés have Wi-Fi passwords scrawled on cardboard, but the router is unplugged when the owner clocks off. Medical cover falls under the CASTILLA Y LEÓN health service; EHIC/GHIC cards are accepted at the centro de salud in Lumbrales, closed weekends. Carry basic antiseptic and plasters if you plan to scramble around the ruined watch-towers outside the village – the stone is goat-head smooth and surprisingly slippery.

An honest goodbye

Belena will not change your life. It offers no souvenir boutiques, no Michelin stars, no ancient citadel to tick off a list. What it does provide is a gauge for how slow time can run when the loudest noise is wheat brushing against wheat. Come if you need reminding that “authentic” need not be packaged, that a village of five thousand souls can feel both empty and welcoming, and that a perfectly adequate lunch costs less than a London pint. Leave before you start correcting newcomers who mispronounce the place name – that means the spell has worked, and you’ve begun to think of Belena as yours rather than theirs.