Montejo

The church bell strikes noon and the only reply is a dog barking three streets away. In Montejo’s main square, a farmer in mud-splashed boots finishes his caña, leaves the glass on the bar counter, and drives his tractor straight past the stone cross that has marked the plaza since 1602. No one photographs him. No one needs to; this is simply how Wednesday works when you live 850 m above sea level on Spain’s northern plateau.

Stone, Soil and Silence

Montejo doesn’t stage itself for visitors. The 70 km haul north-west from Salamanca city ends on a ridge where wheat fields run to the horizon and the village appears as a low, grey smudge. Granite and adobe houses sit tight to the street line, their wooden balconies painted the same oxidised green you see on the nearby grain silos. Restoration has been piecemeal: one façade sports smart new lintels while its neighbour still carries the bruises of five centuries of weather. The effect is neither pretty nor romantic; it is honest, and therefore rare.

The single main thoroughfare, Calle Real, measures barely 300 paces from the fuente at the top to the ermita at the bottom. Halfway along, the parish church of San Miguel blocks the way like a bouncer. Built in the 16th century on the remains of something older, it is a textbook example of rural Romanesque gone sober: thick walls, a squat tower, a doorway carved with rosettes that were already old-fashioned when the last stone was laid. Step inside and the temperature drops five degrees; the smell is of candle wax, old paper and the ghost of incense. No ticket desk, no audio guide, just a printed card asking for one euro towards roof repairs. Drop the coin in the box and the priest’s housekeeper will nod from the sacristy door—probably the only other soul you’ll see all morning.

Walking the Ring of Fields

Beyond the last houses a grid of farm tracks forms a natural 6 km circuit. In April the soil is black and newly turned; by late May wheat brushes your knees, and in July everything turns the colour of digestive biscuits. The route is unsigned but impossible to lose: keep the village on your left shoulder and the sky on your right. Halfway round you pass a collapsed stone hut where storks have built a nest the size of a Fiat 500. They return each year on exactly 12 February, locals claim, and leave the day after the fiesta in August. No one knows how they keep track of the date; everyone agrees it’s impolite to ask.

Serious hikers sometimes sniff at the lack of elevation gain, yet the plain has its own drama. At dawn the land steams after night frost; buzzards hang motionless in thermals; every kilometre the horizon retreats another notch. Bring water—shade is scarce and the nearest bar is the one you started from.

What Feeds the Plate

Montejo’s two cafés open at seven for farmers and close when the last customer leaves. Neither serves “tapas” in the Instagram sense; instead you get a plate of jamón from the pig that hung behind the counter last winter, or a wedge of queso de oveja that tastes of thistle and sheep. Lunch is a fixed-price menú del día (€12, bread and wine included) eaten at metal tables dragged into the street for as long as the weather allows. Expect judiones—the giant butter beans from nearby La Bañeza—stewed with morcilla, followed by chuleta de cordero thick enough to shame most British lamb chops. Vegetarians can ask for escalivada, though the peppers will probably arrive topped with crispy crumbs of jamón anyway; refusal is taken as a charming eccentricity.

If you need supplies, the village shop doubles as the post office and opens for two hours in the morning, one in the evening. Stock is random but comprehensive: nails, tinned sardines, birthday candles, tractor fan belts, and a single shelf of local wine at €3.50 a bottle that punches well above its price.

When the Town Swells to 2,000

For 51 weeks of the year Montejo’s population hovers around 500. Then, on the third weekend of August, the place detonates. Descendants of the original 14 families return from Madrid, Barcelona, even Swindon, pitching tents in almond groves and sleeping in cars rather than miss the fiestas patronales. The church bell rings non-stop, a temporary bar appears in the plaza, and the Saturday night dance spills onto the wheat threshing ground at 4 a.m. Sunday brings a romería to the ermita: half the village walks 2 km behind a brass band, the other half drives alongside offering beer from car boots. By Tuesday morning the rubbish lorries have hauled away the last broken plastic chair and the silence returns, heavier than before. If you crave atmosphere, come then; if you want the meseta to yourself, arrive the following week.

Getting Here, Staying Over

There is no railway. From the UK the sane route is a flight to Madrid, then the ALSA coach to Salamanca (2 h 15 min, €22). Hire a car at the station: the A-66 is dual-carriageway almost to Bañobárez, after which the CL-517 wriggles 25 km through wheat and oak. Petrol pumps are scarce—fill up in Salamanca.

Accommodation is limited. Casa Rural La Escuela has four rooms in the old primary school (doubles €70, breakfast €6). Walls are a metre thick, Wi-Fi is theoretical, and the heating runs on bottled gas—ask for an extra blanket in winter. The only alternative is an apartment above the bakery, rented by the baker’s sister; keys are collected from the bread counter, payment in cash on the bedside table. Both places expect you to arrive after 5 p.m. and leave before noon, timings that suit farmers better than flight schedules.

The Catch in the Calendar

Spring brings larks and green wheat but also the campo’s infamous barro: a sticky clay that cakes boots and turns hire-car floors into pottery. Autumn serves up crisp air and blood-red sunsets, yet farmers burn stubble, draping the village in a haze that smells like a weekend barbecue gone wrong. Winter is crystal-clear, minus five at night, heating scarce, and the bakery the only building guaranteed to be open. Summer skies are huge, the land golden, and the midday heat frankly dangerous—walk before 11 a.m. or after 7 p.m. or pay for it with a headache that even the coldest caña won’t shift.

Montejo will not change your life. It offers no souvenir shops, no viewpoints with selfie frames, no storybook castle. What it does give, generously, is the chance to recalibrate your sense of scale: human small, landscape vast, time measured by wheat not Wi-Fi. Arrive with modest expectations and you may leave wondering why anywhere needs to be more complicated than stone, soil and silence.