Amayuelas de Arriba

The church bell tolls twice. Nothing else moves. At 790 metres above sea level, Amayuelas de Arriba has enough residents—thirty-six at the last count—to fill a single London bus, with seats to spare. The grain silos of Tierra de Campos glint on the horizon; wheat, barley and sorrow have been the main exports here for centuries.

Visitors arrive expecting a ghost village and find instead a quiet experiment in staying alive. The adobe houses, the colour of weathered parchment, are being coaxed back from collapse. Adobe is mud and straw baked hard by the sun; when the sun forgets, cracks appear like laughter lines. A couple from Madrid spend their holidays slapping new mud into the gaps. They say it lowers their blood pressure faster than beta-blockers.

What the Plain Does to People

Castilla y León’s plateau is not romantic. In July the thermometer kisses 38 °C; in January it plunges to –8 °C and the wind arrives straight from the Meseta with no speed bumps. The only free shade is the one you walk in. Bring water, a hat and, outside high summer, a fleece. Mobile reception drops to one bar at the village fountain; consider it nature’s way of suggesting you look up.

The nearest petrol pump is 22 km away in Baltanás. Car hire from Valladolid airport, an hour and a quarter to the south-west, starts at around £30 a day for a Fiat 500 large enough for two adults and a conscience. Trains run from Madrid to Palencia (1 h 15 min on the Alvia), then a local bus trundles to Baltanás on school-day timetables only. Miss it and the taxi fare is €35.

Adobe, Doves and the Art of Not Falling Over

Start at the church, dedicated to San Miguel. It is locked most Tuesdays; the key hangs in the bar that isn’t a bar—really someone’s front room that serves coffee if you knock loudly. Inside, the nave is the width of three farm tractors and smells of candle wax and drought. The priest arrives once a month; the rest of the time the building serves as a sundial for the square.

Behind the church a lane drifts towards the dove cotes. Palomares, they call them: cylinder-shaped brick towers with internal ladders and hundreds of pigeon-sized holes. Doves were medieval Tupperware—meat in times of scarcity, fertiliser the rest of the year. Half are crumbling back into soil; one has been restored and you can climb the internal stairs for two euros, payable into an honesty box that used to be a piggy bank.

The community gardens lie beyond, laid out in strict geometric beds. Onions, broad beans and amaranth grow between companion rows of calendula. Volunteers run weekend courses on composting toilets and clay-plastering; prices hover at €35 for a day including lunch, but dates shift like the Castilian weather. Email first or you may find yourself staring at a locked gate and a very satisfied cat.

Walking Where the Sky Outweighs the Land

Tracks radiate from the village, flat enough for the moderately fit but exposed enough to remind you that hiking in the Meseta is a negotiation with the horizon. The six-kilometre loop to Amayuelas de Abajo passes two abandoned threshing circles and a stone cross where someone left fresh flowers in a jam jar. Interpret that how you wish.

Serious walkers can continue another 14 km to the ruins of the Monasterio de Santa María de la Piedad, where swallows nest in the hollow bell tower. Take a map; waymarking is erratic and Google thinks the path is a field. Expect to see bustards—heavy, football-shaped birds that take off like overloaded cargo planes—and the occasional circling marsh harrier. Binoculars weigh less than regret.

Cyclists will appreciate the lack of traffic; thighs will protest the lack of shade. Mountain bikes can be rented in Palencia for €20 a day, but you’ll need a car rack to get them here.

Food Without the Fanfare

There is no restaurant. Lunch is whatever the community kitchen decides to cook on workshop days—perhaps potaje de garbanzos thick enough to stand a spoon in, followed by quince jelly and coffee that could revive a statue. Donation box: €10. Otherwise, pack a sandwich and fill your bottle at the public fountain; the water is cold and tastes of iron.

Evenings require wheels. Drive ten minutes to Cevico de la Torre and the mesón Casa Maciá serves lechazo—milk-fed lamb roasted in a wood oven—at €22 a portion. Vegetarians get a plate of roast peppers and the sort of sympathy usually reserved for the bereaved. Book ahead; Saturday fills with families discussing crop prices over carafes of tempranillo.

When to Come, When to Stay Away

Spring brings green wheat and migrating storks; the temperature hovers around 20 °C and the silence is punctuated only by skylarks. Autumn is gold and purple, with threshing demonstrations during the September fiesta that doubles the village population for a single afternoon.

August is hot, bright and merciless. The fiesta patronal lures emigrants back; amplified folk music ricochets off adobe until 3 a.m. Sleep is theoretical. If you want monastic quiet, choose May or late September, check the dates and arrive mid-week.

Winter is stark. Snowfall is light but windchill makes minus five feel like Glasgow in February. Heating inside the village houses is wood-burning; if you rent, expect to feed a stove at 2 a.m. and pay for the privilege.

Beds, or the Absence Thereof

There is no hotel, no pension, no casas rurales consortium—yet. Overnight stays depend on the goodwill of residents renting surplus rooms. Expect around €30 a night for a sparse double with shared bathroom and towels that have scrubbed adobe off many a forearm. Enquire via the village association (contact form on their minimalist website; reply within 48 hours if Mercury is not in retrograde).

Alternative: sleep in Palencia where the three-star Hotel Don Rodrigo has doubles from €55 and a café con leche that arrives with a complimentary biscuit. Drive up for the day, escape before the church bell tolls its lonely tenth.

Leaving Without a Fridge Magnet

Amayuelas de Arriba will not change your life. It offers no zip-lines, no Michelin stars, no souvenir shop—just space, cracked earth and the small stubborn fact that people still live here. Take sturdy shoes, an open timetable and the Spanish you promised yourself you’d remember after GCSE. Leave the drone at home; the silence is already complete.