Encinas

Two tractors meeting on the single lane through Encinas constitute rush hour. The village squats at 1,040 m on the Segovia plateau, forty stone houses and a church, nothing between you and the horizon but wheat stubble and holm-oak scrub. Night-time temperatures can touch freezing even in May; in August the air is so thin that swifts circle at eye level. This is Castile stripped to its bones.

High-plateau life, minus the gloss

Encinas is not a weekend retreat dressed up as a hamlet. It is a working grain-and-sheep outpost whose population graph looks like a cliff dive: 220 souls in 1950, 42 on the last electoral roll. The mayor still keeps keys to empty houses in case a roof tile slips; the only shop closed in 1998. What keeps the place alive is a stubborn core of pensioners who refuse to let the fields return to scrub, plus a handful of Madrid architects who bought ruins for the price of a second-hand Volvo and now commute three hours each way.

Limestone walls, timber gates warped by decades of northerly wind, pantiles the colour of burnt toast: the architecture was designed for insulation first, beauty second. Adobe patches show where owners shovelled cereal straw straight from the threshing floor into the wall cavity for winter warmth. Peer over a low arch and you may still find a stone manger; look up and every chimney sprouts a miniature pyramid of Arab tile designed to stop snow sitting long enough to leak.

The Church of the Assumption stands square in the middle, its bell cast in 1752 and cracked in 1938. Mass is celebrated once a month, twice if the priest from Sepúlveda can face the 20 km of switchbacks. On ordinary Sundays the building serves as a whispering gallery: stand by the font and you can hear a sparrow blink in the rafters.

Walking the sky

Maps here are generous with footpaths that exist only in the minds of shepherds. A workable circuit leaves the village past the cement trough labelled “Agua potable – no potable”, drops to the Arroyo de la Mata, then climbs 250 m to the ridge of the Cerro de la Horca. The whole loop is 7 km, takes two hours, and delivers a 50-km view south to the Sierra de Guadarrama. In April the track edges are painted yellow with wild tulips; by July the same soil is powder fine and whistles against your shins. Take more water than you think—altitude deceives the throat.

Serious walkers can stitch together a two-day traverse to Sepúlveda via the Hoces del Duratón gorge, sleeping at the basic refugio in Villar de Sobrepeña (book through the tourist office in Sepúlveda; €15 donation, bring your own sheet). The route follows medieval drovers’ roads carved chest-high into the limestone, so you walk through, rather than over, the landscape. Griffon vultures launch from ledges directly above your head; their wingspan matches the height of a London bus.

Food that arrives when it feels like it

There is no bar in Encinas. The nearest coffee is 9 km away in Valdevacas de Montejo, where Casa Macario opens at 08:00 for farm workers and closes when the owner drives to Segovia for his mother’s dialysis. Order a café con leche and you will get a glass of full-fat milk with a espresso-sized bolt of caffeine floating on top—Castilian style, an acquired taste.

For meals you drive to Sepúlveda, twenty minutes down the SG-232. The usual pilgrimage is to Mesón de Cándido, where cochinillo (suckling pig) is carried to the table on a terracotta tile and ceremonially snapped in half with the edge of a plate. More satisfying, and half the price, is the daily menú at Posada del Duratón: €14 for three courses, bread and wine, featuring judiones (giant butter beans) stewed with pig’s ear, followed by pine-nut tart. Book at weekends; half of Madrid arrives clutching Guardian weekend supplements.

Back in Encinas, if you are self-catering, the mobile fish van parks by the church every Tuesday at 11:30. Hake from Vigo costs €9 a kilo, but bring cash—Elena the fishwife has never heard of contactless.

Seasons of almost nothing

Winter locks the village in from December to March. The road is gritted only as far as the cattle grid; beyond that you need chains or a 4×4. Pipes freeze inside the houses, so residents drain the system and go to cousins in Segovia. Photographers love this emptiness: by day the plateau is monochrome, by night the Milky Way is bright enough to cast shadows. The council has installed one streetlamp to discourage boar, but locals switch it off from 23:00 to save the council €18 a month.

Spring is brief, windy, and the most honest season. Lambs appear overnight in the fields, and every household burns the previous year’s prunings in small pyres that smell of rosemary and resin. Temperatures swing 20 °C in a day; pack both fleece and sun cream.

Summer brings the return of the diaspora. Suddenly there are fifty people in the plaza, a sound system rigged from a tractor battery, and a pig turning on a homemade spit. The fiestas are 12–15 August; visitors are welcome but there are no programmes, just turn up and follow the noise. Accommodation within the village doubles from zero to zero—you sleep in your car or make friends fast.

Autumn is the sweet spot. The grain stubble is burned off in controlled strips, sending up coils of smoke that flatten against the sky. Days are still, nights cold but not vicious, and the holm oaks drop acorns fat enough for jamón ibérico pigs to fatten on. It is the only time the village smells of something other than stone and wind.

How to get here, and why you might not bother

From Madrid Barajas take the A-1 north to Aranda de Duero, then the N-110 to Sepúlveda (total 110 km, 75 min). The final 20 km to Encinas is on the SG-232, single-track with passing places; meet a combine harvester and you reverse 400 m. There is no petrol station after Sepúlveda—fill up.

Public transport is theoretical. A Monday-only bus leaves Madrid’s Estación Sur at 15:30, reaches Sepúlveda at 17:45, and connects with a taxi if you have pre-booked (€30, speak Spanish). The same bus returns at 06:30 Tuesday, an hour before the birds wake.

Accommodation inside the village consists of three privately owned cottages rented by word of mouth. Search “turismo rural Encinas Sepúlveda” and email in Spanish; expect to pay €80–€100 a night for a two-bedroom house with a wood-burning stove and variable hot water. The smarter option is to stay in Sepúlveda and day-trip: Hotel Rafael Figueroa has doubles from €65, decent Wi-Fi, and a pool that catches the evening sun on the city walls.

Encinas will never make a list of “prettiest villages”. It offers no gift shops, no boutique winery, no Instagram pier. What it does provide is a calibration device for urban clocks: a place where time is measured by the flight of vultures and the creak of timber gates, where silence is so complete you can hear your own blood. Turn up expecting entertainment and you will last an hour. Arrive prepared to do nothing and you might understand why some of Madrid’s best-paid architects are happy to spend three hours on the road just to wake up here.