Miranda del Castañar

The road ends in a staircase. One moment you're winding uphill through chestnut woods, the next your hire car is politely but firmly stopped by a stone archway dating from 1380. Beyond the Puerta de San Ginés, Miranda del Castañar's streets turn into stepped alleyways barely wider than a donkey. This is your first indication that the village, perched 649 metres above the Francia valley, wasn't built for the 21st century—or even the 20th.

What it was built for becomes clear when you climb the exposed adarve, the walkway along the medieval wall. To the north, the Sierra de Francia rolls away in successive waves of oak and chestnut, each ridge paler than the last until the horizon dissolves into heat haze. Southwards, the land drops 300 metres to the river, a silver thread glinting through terraces that once fed the entire Duchy of Béjar. The castle keep—now improbably occupied by a micro-brewery—squats directly above the only natural gap in the cliffs. Whoever held this basalt outcrop controlled the transhumance route between the Meseta and the Tagus basin. The Moors knew it; so did the Condes de Miranda, whose coat of arms still pockmarks half the village doors.

Inside the walls, life shrinks to human scale. Population 361, two cafés, one grocery, no cash machine. The nearest ATM is a 25-minute drive to La Alberca, so fill your wallet before you leave Salamanca. Stone houses pile on top of one another like collapsed dominoes, their wooden balconies jutting out just far enough to let neighbours lean across and borrow a lemon. At dusk the limestone glows apricot, and the only sound is the clack of your own boots on schist cobbles. By 23:00 even that stops; the village switches off as suddenly as a theatre after curtain call.

Summer brings day-trippers from Madrid, but they rarely stay past the churros van. Spend the night and you'll have the place to yourself by eight o'clock. Stay longer and you'll notice the altitude: mornings sharp enough for a fleece even in July, afternoons that send you hunting for shade on the north side of the wall. Winter is a different proposition. The SA-200 from Béjar is kept open, but a dusting of snow can turn Miranda into a cider-scented ghost ship. Book Posada Miranda—four rooms above the old guardhouse—and the owner will leave a thermos of caldo chorreao outside your door at dawn.

Walking tracks radiate from the village like spokes. The easiest is the 5-kilometre loop to the Chorrero de la Serrá, a waterfall that doubles its volume after spring rain. The path drops through sweet-chestnut coppice, crosses a stone bridge older than the Inquisition, then climbs back via an abandoned charcoal-makers' settlement. Allow two hours, plus another twenty minutes if you stop to photograph wild peonies in May. Serious hikers can continue east along the GR-14 long-distance trail to Mogarraz, a six-hour traverse that trades castle views for vertiginous oak forest. Carry water; fountains are seasonal and the bar in Mogarraz closes on Thursdays.

October is mushroom month. Locals guard their níscalo patches with the same fervour Berkshire farmers reserve for pheasant coverts, so don't wander off-piste waving a wicker basket. Instead, sign on with the mycological association that meets outside the bullring every Tuesday morning. For €15 you get a permit, a guided foray, and a tasting of sautéed milk-caps back at La Mandrágora. The same café serves a set lunch—soup, stew, wine, dessert—for whatever you feel like dropping into the honesty jar. British palates appreciate the ajoblanco, a chilled almond-garlic soup that tastes like liquid marzipan and contains no chilli whatsoever.

The plaza de toros itself deserves a detour. Built in 1711 inside the walled precinct, it is Spain's second-oldest bullring still in use. Stone bleachers rise directly from the alleyways; residents can step out of their front doors and into their seats. No animals suffer on ordinary weekends: the space doubles as a drying yard for chestnut husks and a shortcut to the upper gate. Stand in the centre and you realise the entire village is acoustically tuned; a dropped coin echoes off the duke's palace like a starter pistol.

Food is mountain fare, heavy on pork and lighter on vegetables than a Brighton market stall. The local rufete red—grown on granite terraces at 700 metres—drinks more like a Beaujolais than the oaky Riojas Brits expect. Pair it with cabrito asado at Casa Juan, the only restaurant guaranteed to open on a Saturday night, but arrive before 21:00 or the goat will be gone. Vegetarians get by on patatas meneás: paprika-spiked potatoes mashed with fried garlic and enough olive oil to make Cardiologists faint. Pudding is perrunillas, crumbly shortbread biscuits that arrive by the fistful with tiny glasses of chestnut liqueur. The liqueur is homemade, so accept politely and don't ask about the alcohol percentage.

Downsides? The village is 25 kilometres from the nearest filling station, and petrol closes at 20:00. Mobile reception vanishes inside two-foot walls; download offline maps while you're still in Béjar. If it rains heavily, the adarve is closed—plummeting 40 metres into a chestnut grove holds little appeal when stone is slick. And Monday is extinction day: both cafés shut, the grocery pulls its shutters, even the castle brewery locks its tasting room. Visit Tuesday to Saturday, when you can still hear tractors at dawn and the bread van toots its horn at nine.

Leave early enough and you can be back in Salamanca for lunch, but that feels like changing channels halfway through a film. Better to check out at eleven, buy a bag of honey-roast chestnuts from the seasonal stall by the gate, and walk one last circuit of the walls. From the southern bastion the Francia valley looks newly minted, terraces gleaming after the morning dew. Somewhere below, a cuckoo counts the hour. Then the church bell answers, echoing off granite, and for a moment the centuries collapse into a single, audible breath. After that, the motorway feels like science fiction.