Calzada De Bejar La

The church bell strikes noon and the only other sound is a tractor shutting down outside the single bar. Calzada de Béjar doesn’t do background noise. Halfway between Salamanca and the Portuguese border, this scatter of stone houses is what Spaniards call el quinto pino – literally “the fifth pine tree”, slang for the back of beyond. Yet that remoteness is precisely what makes the village useful. It is the antidote to the Costas, a place where the Wi-Fi drops out long before you do.

A village named after a Roman road that no longer exists

The name – calzada means “paved way” – hints at grander traffic than today’s lone dairy lorry. A Roman silver route once passed nearby, funnelling Iberian metals north to the empire. No flagstones survive in the village itself; instead you get two parallel streets, a bread-van on Tuesdays and a population that can be outnumbered by cattle. The houses are built from whatever was lying around: granite for the corners, adobe bricks for the walls, red pan tiles that curl at the edges like stale toast. Everything smells faintly of woodsmoke and wet straw, a reminder that many sheds still shelter sheep rather than Seat Ibizas.

Walking country for people who hate way-markers

Head north-east and you are into dehesa within five minutes – the savanna-like grassland that covers much of western Spain. Holm oaks stand 30 m apart, their lower limbs lopped for charcoal, giving the hills the look of an abandoned orchard. There are no signed paths, just a lattice of farm tracks. Follow any one for 45 minutes and you will meet either a stone watering trough or a 90-year-old shepherd who will nod, surprised to see trainers instead of hunting dogs. The going is gentle; even in March the highest ridges barely touch 900 m, so snow is occasional rather than guaranteed. Spring brings carpets of white daisies and the clacking of storks overhead; October smells of wet earth and acorn husks.

If you want serious altitude, keep driving. Twelve kilometres up the SA-220, Béjar sits beneath the Sierra’s ski station, La Covatilla. The road climbs 1,100 m in 18 hair-pin bends and can be closed after heavy snow, but on clear days the summit gives views west to Portugal. In summer the lifts run for mountain-bikers; in winter a day pass costs €32 and the slopes are mercifully free of the queues that plague the Pyrenees.

A gastronomy that remembers the pig

There is no restaurant in Calzada itself, only the bar which opens at 07:00 for farmers and again at 20:00 for everyone else. Coffee is €1.20, a caña of Mahou €1.50, and the tapas run to chunks of jamón carved straight off the bone. For anything more elaborate you drive to Béjar, where La Dehesa serves judiones – butter-fat beans the size of squash balls – stewed with partridge (€14). The local chacina (charcuterie) is noticeably less salty than versions sold in Madrid; ask for lomo de bellota, the cured loin from acorn-fed pigs, and the waiter will first ask if you are sure, then bring 80 g sliced so thin you can read the tablecloth through it. Vegetarians can fall back on hornazo, a pie of egg and onion, but should expect puzzled looks.

When fiestas outnumber outsiders

August brings the patronal fiestas: three nights of brass bands, bingo in the square and a foam machine for children. There is no accommodation quota to worry about; visitors sleep in their cousins’ spare rooms. The bigger spectacle is the Romería in late May, when half the village drives 20 km to a meadow in the Sierra, spends the day grilling sardines and returns in open-backed trucks singing 1980s copla hits. Foreigners are welcome, though you will be assumed to have got lost on the way to Cáceres.

Semana Santa is low-key: a single procession on Maundy Thursday, hooded penitents carrying a platform with the Virgin lit by battery bulbs. The drums echo off stone walls so narrow that you can touch both sides at once. At the rear walks the priest, murmuring the rosary through a megaphone whose batteries are gradually fading – unintentionally symbolic of faith in rural Spain.

Getting here, staying here, accepting the silence

The nearest airport is Madrid; the train to Salamanca takes 1 h 40 min from Chamartín, then you collect a car and head south-west on the A-66. Exit at Béjar, fork right onto the SA-220 and follow the signs for 9 km of curves. There is no petrol station in Calzada; fill up in Béjar where fuel runs about €1.55 a litre. Buses are theoretical – one departure a day from Salamanca that arrives at 14:00, turns round and leaves at 14:05.

Accommodation is the weak link. The village has no hotel, no pension, not even a signed casa rural. Your choices are: (1) rent a house in Béjar through the tourist office (two-night minimum, about €80 per night for a two-bedroom flat), (2) ask in the bar – someone’s cousin has keys to an empty family home and will rent it for cash, or (3) stay in Salamanca and day-trip. Campers sometimes wild-park by the sports ground, but the ayuntamiento has started locking the gate after complaints about litter.

Phone coverage is patchy: Movistar works on the upper streets, Vodafone disappears entirely. Most houses rely on rainwater collection for non-drinking use; if you are offered a shower, accept quickly before the storage runs dry. Summer temperatures reach 34 °C but drop to 12 °C at night; bring a fleece even in July. Winter nights regularly go below zero – pipes freeze, roads ice over and the village becomes a cul-de-sac until the sun burns off the frost.

Leave before you become the gossip

After two days you will recognise every dog by bark, every farmer by cap. The appeal of Calzada de Béjar lies in what it lacks: souvenir shops, bike-rental kiosks, multilingual menus. That absence becomes claustrophobic if you linger. Check out, drive back through the dehesa and watch the village shrink in the rear-view mirror until only the church tower remains, a stone finger pointing at roads the Romans never finished.