Robliza De Cojos

The albergue door sticks. Everyone who walks the lesser-known Camino from Salamanca to Portugal remembers this detail first. After 33 km of wheat fields and tractor dust, Robliza de Cojos appears as a cluster of stone walls and pantile roofs, and the municipal hostel sits square on Calle Escultor Vernancio Blanco – a big yellow house with a handwritten note taped to the window: "Llaves en la casa amarilla". The key hangs inside a donation box. No hospitalero, no reception, just an honesty system and a washstand instead of showers. British walkers tend to laugh at this point, then head straight for the pool-bar.

A Village That Keeps the Camino Honest

Robliza won’t pamper anyone. Population hovers around 500, though numbers swell each summer when the fiestas wake the square. The place functions as a staging post rather than a destination: pilgrims arrive dusty, locals nod from doorways, and by nightfall the only lights come from the bar beside the municipal swimming pool. Order a caña and a bocadillo de lomo – pork-loin baguette, no frills – and the barman will scribble the Wi-Fi password on a blackboard that leans against the beer fridge. Signal reaches two tables on the terrace; beyond that, you’re on your own.

Stone houses line two short streets. Granite lintels still carry the mason’s initials, and wooden gates hang from medieval ironwork. Some façades have been repointed in crisp white mortar, others slump gently under centuries of sun. Peek through an open doorway and you’ll see the classic Castilian layout: narrow entrance tunnel, cobbled patio, corral at the back where a donkey once waited. One or two properties have been converted into weekend cottages, but most remain working homes with vegetable plots where lettuce survives on rainfall alone.

The parish church closes its doors at dusk. Ask in the bar for María – she keeps the key – and she’ll walk you across the square while recounting whose grandparents paid for which chapel niche. Inside, the nave smells of candlewax and damp stone; a sixteenth-century retablo glints with chipped gold leaf. Bell ropes dangle through the ceiling like thick ponytails. Climb the tower if María feels generous; the view stretches across cereal fields that shift from emerald in April to biscuit brown by July.

Walking Without Waymarks

No yellow arrows point out of Robliza. The Camino simply follows the farm track south-west towards Villar Mayor de Armuña, but anyone with energy to spare can loop east along unmarked caminos rurales. These dirt lanes skirt oak dehesas where black Iberian pigs graze under holm oaks. Distances feel longer than they look: the horizon ripples, heat shimmers, and a 5 km circuit ends up taking two hours if you stop to photograph crumbling stone hórreos or the concrete pillbox left from Civil War skirmishes.

Bring water; fountains are scarce and the fountain in the square is potable but slow. Mobile coverage is patchy once you drop into the arroyo valleys, so download an offline map. Locals will offer directions, though measurements come in “media legua” – roughly 2.5 km – a unit that died out everywhere else except here. Expect to share the path with a tractor rather than another pilgrim.

What Passes for Gastronomy

Robliza itself has no restaurant. The pool-bar opens at eleven for coffee, closes when the last swimmer leaves around nine. Menu options run to huevos rotos con patatas – essentially posh egg-and-chips – and caldo in winter, a thick soup of chickpeas and morcilla that sticks to the ribs. House wine arrives in a plain glass tumbler and costs €1.20; Brits routinely remark it’s cheaper than bottled water and doesn’t taste of vinegar. If the bar shutters are down, the nearest supermarket sits 12 km away in Guijuelo, famous for jamón ibérico. A taxi there and back costs €25 split four ways – stock up on vacuum-packed ham, allowed through UK customs if under 2 kg and sealed.

Vegetarians struggle. The village vegetable truck rolls through on Thursday mornings, horn blaring. Stallholders sell misshapen peppers, dirt-on potatoes and bunches of flat-leaf parsley that still hold the morning dew. Buy early; by ten thirty the truck rumbles on towards the next pueblo.

When the Fiesta Takes Over

For forty-eight hours each August the place doubles in size. The fiestas patronales honour the Virgin’s Assumption with a brass band that rehearses in the square at midnight, volume unchecked. Processions leave the church at seven in the evening, winding past houses draped with bed-sheet bunting. Locals who emigrated to Madrid or Valladolid return with children who speak city Spanish and clutch neon water pistols. A pig turns on a makeshift spit; the smell of rosemary and rendered fat drifts through every street. Visitors are welcome but not catered for – bring your own chair, and if you want to dance, expect someone’s aunt to teach you the pasodoble.

The morning after, silence. Empty wine cartons pile beside the recycling bins, the band has driven off in a dented minibus, and the village returns to its default rhythm of tractor engines and church bells marking the hours.

The Practical Bits No One Mentions

Cash: there is no ATM. Bring at least €20 in small coins – albergue donation, coffee, emergency tortilla. Cards are laughed at.

Beds: the municipal albergue offers sixteen mattresses on bunks, blankets that smell of camphor, and a cold-water basin in the courtyard. If that sounds medieval, Casa Rural El Recuerdo sits four kilometres away in Valdefuentes de Sangusín. WhatsApp +34 635 482 119; the owner, Jesús, will collect walkers for €5 if you pre-arrange. Airbnb reviews average 4.97 for spotless rooms and a hot shower worth every cent.

Weather: May and September deliver 25 °C days and cool nights. July-August nudges 38 °C; the pool becomes essential. Winter drops to –3 °C at night; the albergue stays open but has no heating beyond a plug-in radiator that guzzles more electricity than the village grid likes.

Transport: Monday-to-Friday bus from Salamanca at 14:15, returns 07:00 next morning. Weekend service ceased in 2018. A taxi from the city costs €45 – share via the Camino WhatsApp group someone will inevitably set up at the cathedral.

Leaving at Dawn

Most pilgrims slip away before sunrise, headlamps bobbing past the stone cross at the village edge. Robliza doesn’t invite lingering, yet the memory lingers: the squeak of the albergue gate, the taste of lomo eaten on a plastic chair, the night sky so clear you see the Milky Way without trying. It’s not pretty, not polished, but it keeps the Camino honest – a reminder that rural Spain still runs on neighbourly keys, cold beer and sheer stubbornness.