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about Valle de Tabladillo
Set in a valley with historic gypsum mines; distinctive landscape
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The Village that Forgot to Shout
Valle de Tabladillo doesn’t announce itself. The road simply stops climbing, the junipers thin out, and seventy-odd stone houses appear at the edge of the meseta as if a larger town had been left out in the sun and shrunk. At 930 m above sea level the air is already thinner than in Segovia fifty kilometres behind; lungs raised on sea-level pint-pulling notice the difference before the hire-car engine does. Night-time temperatures in April can brush zero, while August afternoons spike to 35 °C—bring both fleece and factor 30 if you plan to stay longer than a coffee.
There is no petrol station, cash machine, or souvenir shop. The single bar opens when the owner hears footsteps, and the nearest supermarket is a 20-minute drive back down the CU-902. What the village does have is a soundtrack: wind combing through holm-oak and juniter, the clack of a gate someone last oiled in 1998, and, if you’re up before the swifts, the creak of a front door as a shepherd trudges out to check seventy sheep that graze the common land above the cemetery.
Stone, Adobe, and the Smell of Rain on Dust
Architecture here is a DIY manual written in limestone. Houses are the colour of dry toast, their corners rounded by centuries of grainy breeze. Adobe walls two-feet thick keep interiors cool in summer and blunt the edge of winter gales; wooden balconies, once painted Wedgwood blue, now flake to reveal earlier coats of ox-blood red. Most dwellings still have the original stone mangers in the ground-floor stable—handy for the occasional guest who arrives with a horse rather than a Tesla.
The fifteenth-century church of San Pedro sits square in the middle of the single plaza. Its bell tolls the hour only between seven in the morning and ten at night, an economy that says everything about municipal budgets. Step inside during Saturday evening mass and you’ll find twelve parishioners, three of them asleep, plus a priest who drives over from Sepúlveda and double-parks his SEAT between the aloes. The retablo is nothing special; the smell of beeswax and old paper is.
Walk two streets east and the village simply ends. A camino real carries on, wheel-ruts fossilised into rock, heading towards a horizon so wide it makes the sky feel overweight. This is walking country, but not the yomping sort. Trails are unsigned, marked only by the occasional cairn or the bleached skull of a wild boar picked clean by vultures. A circular 7 km loop—locals call it “la vuelta de la eras”—takes you past threshing circles carved into the bedrock and returns you in time for lunch, provided you started before eleven. Stouter boots and a GPS track open up a ridge route to the Duratón gorge; the cliffs drop 130 m to the river and Egyptian vultures ride the thermals at eye-level. Mobile reception dies after the first kilometre, so screenshot the map while you still have bars.
Why August Feels Like a Mistake and October Doesn’t
From late June to early September the village population quadruples. Grandchildren from Madrid and Valladolid arrive with inflatable pools and reggaeton playlists; the bar stays open until two, and someone wheels out a smoke machine for the fiesta patronales around the fifteenth of August. Accommodation—four self-catering cottages and two rural rooms above the bakery—books up six months ahead. Prices leap from €70 to €120 a night, and the silence that defines Tabladillo packs its bags until September.
October repacks the silence and adds a layer of woodsmoke. Daytime highs hover at 18 °C, ideal for the 12 km hike to the abandoned village of Tabanera where stone roofs have collapsed into kitchens last used under Franco. Mushroom hunters prowl the pine plantations after rain; if you spot cars parked askew on the verge, assume someone has beaten you to the chanterelles. November brings the first frost; by January snow can block the access road for half a day, and the council tractor clears it in order of priority: livestock trucks first, school bus second, tourists never. Winter days are diamond-bright, the sierra etched against cobalt, but night-time thermometers plunge to –8 °C. Book heating, not charm.
Eating: Where to Go When the Village Hasn’t Got It
Tabladillo itself offers, on a good day, coffee, crisps, and a plate of ham cut thicker than a phone book. Anything more elaborate requires wheels. Five minutes north, Sepúlveda’s main street dishes out roast suckling lamb (€24 a quarter) in restaurants that occupy twelfth-century cellars. Try El Figón de Eduardo for caramelised trotters and a glass of tempranillo that tastes like blackberries left in a leather jacket pocket. Vegetarians get a better deal at La Tabaiba in Sebúlcor—10 km south—where a red-pepper stuffed with chickpeas and shaved sheep’s cheese costs €14 and nobody apologises for the absence of meat.
If you’re self-catering, stock up in Segovia before you climb. The village shop in Carrascal de Río, 12 km away, opens 9–1 and 5–8, closed Monday afternoons and all Sunday. Bread arrives in Tabladillo at 11:30 in a white van whose horn plays the first two bars of “La Cucaracha”; run out and wave or you’ll be eating crackers.
Beds, Bills, and How to Leave Without a Cliffhanger
Casas rurales are the only game in town. Three sit inside the village, two more straggle towards the livestock dam. All recycle the same ingredients: exposed stone, underfloor heating, and Wi-Fi that expires whenever the wind changes. Weekend rates start at €80 for two; weekly stays drop to €55 a night outside high summer. Hosts leave a bottle of local red and a note asking you to feed the border collie if she looks hungry. Electricity is included until you plug in an EV; then they phone nervously about the meter spinning like a Catherine wheel.
Check-out is 11 a.m., but nobody rushes you. The owner’s cousin will appear with a dustpan, chat for twenty minutes about the price of barley, and offer directions to a Neolithic necropolis you’ll never find. Accept the conversation; it’s part of the tariff.
To leave, retrace the CU-902 to the N-110. The first 8 km drop 400 m through switchbacks where wild cats sprint across the tarmac. If you’ve timed it right, dawn light will ignite the stone walls the colour of burnt cream and the village will shrink in the mirror until only the bell-tower is visible, a single finger reminding you that quiet places don’t beg you to stay—they simply resume the business of being quiet.
