Valdefuentes De Sangusin

The church bell strikes seven and the village answers. Windows light up one by one, a tractor coughs into life, and somewhere a dog barks at nothing in particular. From the edge of Valdefuentes de Sangusín, the land falls away in every direction—an ocean of wheat and barley that ripples like water when the wind catches it. At 800 metres above sea level, the air carries a clarity that makes the distant cathedral spire of Salamanca flash silver on clear days, forty-five kilometres to the south-west.

This is Spain’s high plateau before it buckles into the sierras. The altitude keeps summer mornings bearable—temperatures hover around 22 °C at nine o’clock—but by two the mercury can push past 35 °C. Come December the same streets glaze with frost; the provincial road from the A-62 is gritted promptly, yet the smaller farm tracks can stay white for days. Winter visitors should pack boots with a proper tread; summer walkers need water bottles and a hat. There is no pharmacy in the village, only a weekly mobile unit that parks beside the ayuntamiento on Thursday mornings.

Stone, adobe and timber hold the place together. Houses rise straight from the lane, their lower walls quarried from local limestone, the upper sections baked from river clay and straw. Wooden balconies, painted the colour of ox-blood, project just far enough to let a widow shake a rug without touching the opposite wall. Many doorways still carry the family name chiselled into the lintel—Hnos. Prieto, 1923—a practice that stopped when Franco’s agrarian reforms broke up the great estates. Look up and you will notice iron rings set into the stone: tethering posts for mules that once queued outside the grain store, now converted into a modest cultural centre with uneven Wi-Fi.

The church that anchors time

The parish church of San Miguel opens only for mass at noon on Sundays and major saints’ days. The rest of the week the priest circuits six neighbouring villages, a schedule unchanged since 1874. Push the south door—heavy, pine, iron-studded—and the interior smells of candle wax and freshly swept stone. The retablo is neither lavish nor particularly old (re-gilded in 1957 after lightning scorched the roof), yet the carved cherubs have the plump optimism of children who have never seen a city. Drop a euro in the box and the sacristan, if he is around, will switch on the nave lights long enough to photograph the timber ceiling: beams from the Sierra de Francia hauled here by ox-team before the railway reached Salamanca.

Outside, the plaza is barely thirty paces across. Locals call it la glorieta, though there is no bandstand, just four plane trees and a stone bench worn smooth by grandfathers. At dusk the bench fills in order of arrival; the last man brings a folding chair from home. Conversation is clipped, mostly prices—barley per quintal, diesel per litre—interrupted by the clatter of storks returning to the bell-tower. The birds have nested here since 1986; their chicks can be heard squeaking like unoiled hinges long before you see them.

Walking the cereal sea

Three marked footpaths leave the village, all blazed with green and white stripes. The shortest, 5 km, loops past the ruined cortijo of Los Moros—actually nineteenth-century, despite the romantic name—where swallows nest in the empty grain silos. The longest, 14 km, cuts east to Valdecarros along a medieval drove road still walled with flat slate; farmers call it la cañada real and drive sheep down it each October for winter pasture. OSM maps on a phone work, but carry a paper backup: the signal drops in every hollow, and July thunderstorms can appear in minutes, turning the clay path into skating-rink slickness.

Cyclists favour the undulating lane north to Vecinos, population 217. The gradient never exceeds six per cent, yet the altitude makes thighs burn earlier than expected. Halfway, a stone cross marks the boundary of two medieval grazing commons; cows have right of way, and they know it. Stop, breathe, and notice how the wheat changes shade with every degree of sun—ochre, bronze, old gold—until cloud shadow wipes the colour slate-grey in an instant.

What you will not find

There is no hotel, no gift shop, no interpretive centre. The single bar, Casa Agapito, opens at seven in the morning for coffee and media tostadas, closes at ten, reopens at eight for beer and cards, and shuts definitively when the last customer leaves—often before midnight. A handwritten sheet behind the counter lists three tapas: chorizo from Ciudad Rodrigo (£2.50), local cheese with quince (£3), and farinato (a soft sausage of bread and paprika, £2). Payment is cash only; the card reader broke in 2019 and nobody has missed it.

Accommodation means renting one of three village houses restored by the regional government. Keys are collected from the ayuntamiento secretary who lives opposite the petrol pump; she prefers forty-eight hours’ notice via WhatsApp, though she will turn up in slippers if you ring the bell. Expect Wi-Fi fast enough for email, not for Netflix, and a shower that delivers scalding or freezing water, never both at once. Price: £55 a night for the two-bedroom house, minimum two nights. Bring slippers; stone floors are cold even in May.

Calendar moments

The fiesta patronal begins on the first weekend of August. Emigrants return from Madrid, Barcelona, even Swindon, tripling the population. A sound system appears in the plaza, powerful enough to make windowpanes flex until four in the morning; light sleepers should book a house on the northern edge. Saturday’s highlight is the encierro de vaquillas, heifers released in a makeshift ring of hay bales while teenagers demonstrate bravery of questionable wisdom. Sunday mass is sung by a visiting choir from Alba de Tormes; afterwards the priest blesses the fields with a plastic sprinkler dipped in holy water, an adaptation made necessary after the bronze aspergillum was stolen in 1998.

Autumn brings the matanza, though the public part is merely the degusta—a tasting of freshly slaughtered pork in the communal oven. For €10 you receive a plate of morcilla, a slice of ventresca, and a glass of arribes red. Vegetarians should mark the date and plan a day trip to Salamanca’s market instead.

Getting there, getting away

Salamanca’s railway station has hourly buses to Valdefuentes de Sangusín, except Sundays when the service drops to three. The journey takes fifty-five minutes and costs €4.20 each way; buy your ticket on board and carry change. A hire car is faster—forty minutes on the A-62 to exit 295, then ten kilometres of provincial road shared with combine harvesters. Petrol is cheaper at the village pump than on the motorway, but it closes between two and four for the proprietor’s siesta.

Leave before dawn in October and you will see the plateau dissolve into a lake of mist, village rooftops floating like islands. Stay until late February and night skies are so dark that Orion seems close enough to snag on a weather vane. Either season, pack layers; altitude turns a warm afternoon into a frost-bitten evening before you have finished your coffee. And remember the Spanish proverb painted on the bar wall: “Viajero, no hay camino; se hace camino al andar.” In Valdefuentes de Sangusín the path is simply the next furrow in an endless field—walk it as far as you wish, then turn back before the storks return.