Lagunilla

The church bell strikes noon, yet the only sound that follows is a farmer's quad bike heading uphill. Lagunilla keeps its own timetable. Perched at 985 m on the southern flank of the Sierra de Béjar, the village is high enough for the air to carry a resinous snap of pine and chestnut, but low enough that stone houses still bake honey-warm in spring sunshine. Roughly 400 permanent residents live here year-round, a number that doubles when madrileños arrive to reopen holiday cottages for the weekend.

Stone, timber and slate dominate the streetscape. Granite sills bulge from rendered walls, wooden balconies sag under pots of geraniums, and every so often a passageway opens onto a cobbled corral where chickens once scratched. Many façades remain unpolished: chipped plaster shows earlier colour washes the colour of mustard and ox-blood, iron rings for tethering beasts project beside modern meter boxes, and moss softens the lower courses of walls that have never known a damp-proof course. Restoration grants are arriving, yet plenty of dwellings still carry the honest wrinkles of centuries.

Walking the Border Between Dehesa and Sky

The village sits on a natural shelf where cultivated terraces give way to oak and sweet-chestnut forest. A five-minute stroll along the lane past the last street lamp puts you on the traditional drove road to Valdelageve; the granite milestones read "S. XIX", relics of a time when cattle moved between winter pastures in Extremadura and summer grazing here. The path climbs gently through dehesa—open woodland where black Iberian pigs now nose among acorns—before threading a steep cleft that smells of damp fern. Allow ninety minutes to reach the ridge at 1,350 m; there you can pick out the stone beehive huts of shepherds and, on a clear evening, the lights of Salamanca 70 km away.

Maps published by the regional government mark half a dozen circular walks, but signage is erratic. Locals navigate by stone walls, spring houses and the height of the skyline. British hikers used to way-marked rights-of-way should pack a print-out or GPS track; phone reception drops behind the first spur. The reward is near-solitude: even on an October Sunday you may meet only a mushroom hunter and a retired teacher collecting chestnuts for marrón glacé.

Four Seasons, Four Tempos

Winters bite. Snow can fall from November to March and, although the main EX-118 is cleared promptly, the final 6 km access road twists enough to make chains advisable after heavy falls. Bars open late and close early; some only at weekends. Yet the cold air is astonishingly clear—night skies register a Bortle class of 3, making Orion look close enough to snag on a rooftop TV aerial—and guest-house prices drop to €45 for a double with breakfast.

Spring arrives in slow motion. Almond blossom shows in late March, followed by orchid spikes in May. Temperatures hover in the mid-teens: T-shirt weather at midday, fleece after sundown. This is the sweet spot for walking; streams still run, meadows are green, and you avoid both the summer exodus from Madrid and the mushroom-hunting crowds of October.

Summer is surprisingly liveable. At 1,000 m nights generally cool to 16 °C even when the Duero basin below swelters at 35 °C. The village fountain, built in 1897 and fed by a captured spring, becomes the social hub where parents fill water pistols and grandparents gossip about water quotas. Accommodation books up early for the last two weeks of August, when fiestas honour the Virgen de la Asunción with outdoor dancing and a communal paella that needs a three-metre pan.

Autumn steals the show. Chestnut leaves turn copper, acorns rain onto slate roofs with a sound like hail, and the scent of wood smoke drifts down lanes. Weekend traffic increases—this is seta (wild mushroom) territory and licence plates from Seville or Valencia appear—but turn off the main path and silence returns. Locals recommend the track eastwards towards Linares de Riofrío; you pass abandoned threshing floors alive with crickets and reach an unmanned refuge where the only entry requirement is to sign a ledger and sweep up before leaving.

Eating as the Highlands Dictate

There is no tasting menu, no chef's reinterpretation of grandmother's stew. What you get is the daily set lunch—three courses, water and house wine for €12—served between 14:00 and 16:00 in the single bar-restaurant on Plaza de España. Expect judiones de la granja (broad beans the size of quails' eggs), migas enriched with chorza (a local chorizo spiced with pimentón de la Vera) and, if you order ahead, cordero al chilindrón cooked until the knuckle meat slides from the bone. Vegetarians can request patatas a la importancia, flour-dusted potato slices in saffron broth, but vegan choices are scarce.

Breakfast is simpler: tostada drizzled with local honey and a cortado made from beans roasted in Béjar, the nearest market town 12 km away. That is also where you stock up if you are self-catering; Lagunilla's only shop opens for three hours in the morning and carries little beyond tinned tuna, UHT milk and firewood sold by the kilo.

Getting Here, Staying Put

No train reaches these hills. From the UK the usual route is a flight to Madrid, then either a rental car (two-hour drive on the A-50 and EX-118) or the daily Alsa coach to Béjar followed by a local taxi for the final fifteen minutes. Car hire pays off if you intend to visit neighbouring stone villages—Candelario, Hervás, La Alberca—or want early-morning access to trailheads before the sun lifts the scent of broom from the valleys.

Accommodation is limited to half a dozen casas rurales, most converted from 19th-century labourers' cottages. Expect thick walls, low doorways, wood-burning stoves and Wi-Fi that forgets the password when the router overheats. Prices range from €70–€90 per night for a two-bedroom house in low season, rising to €120 in August and between Christmas and Three Kings. Heating in winter is via pellet stove; bags of pellets are supplied but you may need to top up at the ironmonger's in Béjar if temperatures plunge below –5 °C for several nights. There is no hotel, and the one pension closed after the owner retired; refurbishment plans appear annually in the municipal bulletin but have yet to move beyond scaffolding.

The Pleasure of Letting Time Slip

Lagunilla is not dramatic. It offers no castle keep, no Michelin stars, no craft-beer taproom. Instead it gives altitude without effort, the quiet creak of timber under your boots, and the realisation that the day is measured by shadows moving across a stone basin rather than notifications on a phone. Choose it if you want to walk until your legs ache, read by firelight in October and taste a region where food still answers to climate and workload rather than fashion. Come prepared for early closures, patchy signal and evenings that finish when the last bottle of tempranillo is empty. Accept those limits and the village repays you with something increasingly scarce: a landscape that refuses to hurry.