Calabazas de Fuentidueña

The church bell strikes eleven and nobody stirs. At 900 metres above sea level, Calabazas de Fuentidueña floats in a silence so complete you can hear your own pulse. Twenty-five souls live here, give or take, scattered among low adobe houses that look as if they’ve grown out of the red earth itself. This is the Segovian high plain, halfway between Madrid’s bustle and the wine towns of Ribera del Duero, yet light-years away from either.

Drive in from the A-1 and the tarmac narrows to a single-track lane where stone pines lean overhead like bored sentries. The village appears without warning: a cluster of roofs, a single church tower, then nothing but cereal fields and resin-scented forest. No petrol station, no cash machine, not even a bar. Mobile reception flickers in and out, mostly out. What you do get is space – hectares of it – and a primer on how Castile survived the twentieth century by staying exactly where it was.

The Church That Outnumbered Its Flock

Iglesia de San Andrés stands locked for most of the year. Ask for the key at the house opposite with the green persiana and an elderly woman will appear, wipe her hands on her apron, and lead you in without a word. Inside, the air smells of candle smoke and damp stone. The nave is barely twelve metres long; a single aisle, wooden pews polished by generations of Sunday-best trousers. Over the altar hangs a nineteenth-century crucifix whose paint has blistered in the dry heat. It isn’t art, it’s furniture – built for use, not admiration – and that humility feels almost radical after the gold-leaf excess of Segovia’s cathedral half an hour away.

Step outside and the plaza is empty except for a stone cross and a bench that faces the fields. Sit long enough and someone will shuffle past, nod, and carry on. Conversation is optional; presence is enough.

Forests Older Than the Railways

Leave the houses behind and the world tilts upward into pinares: stone pine and maritime pine planted under royal decree in the 1700s to supply charcoal for the navy. Resin taps still scar the trunks like old knife wounds. Follow any track and you’ll reach clearings where wild thyme cushions the ground and hoopoes flap overhead like striped deckchairs. The GR-88 long-distance footpath skirts the village, but way-marking is erratic – download the track before you set off and carry water. Summer temperatures brush 35 °C at midday; in winter the same tracks freeze hard and the Sierra de Guadarrama glitters white on the southern horizon.

Cyclists find rolling asphalt loops west toward Fuentidueña de Tajo (14 km) and east to Ayllón (28 km) with gradients that rarely top five per cent. Traffic is so thin you can ride two abreast and still hear larks. Stop where the road crests and the only sound is chain on sprocket.

Where to Eat When There’s Nowhere to Eat

Calabazas itself has no restaurants, no shop, not even a vending machine. Self-catering is mandatory. Stock up in Sepúlveda (25 min drive) where Dulce de la Villa sells local chorizo cured in paprika and mountain oregano, and Panadería El Carmen bakes empanadas stuffed with morcilla on Fridays. If you want someone else to cook, drive twenty minutes to Fuentidueña de Tajo and try Asador de Fuentidueña – a no-frills dining room that does Segovian roast suckling lamb (€22 half portion, order ahead) and clay-bowl lentils flavoured with smoked pancetta. House wine comes from Aranda del Duero and tastes better than it should at €9 a bottle.

Back in the village, evening entertainment means lighting the barbecue at your rental house and watching the sky fade from brass to violet. Satellites pass overhead; the ISS times its appearance like clockwork. By eleven the Milky Way is a smear of chalk across black slate.

A Roof, a Bed, and the Occasional Peacock

Accommodation is limited to two privately owned casas rurales. La Morada del Cura sleeps six, has thick stone walls that keep July heat at bay, and a patio where previous guests have left paperbacks in five languages. The owner, Pilar, lives in Madrid and leaves the key under a flowerpot; she’ll text you the Wi-Fi code even though the router struggles past 3 Mbps. At €90 a night minimum two nights it’s cheaper than a city centre Travelodge and considerably quieter. Bring slippers – original clay tiles are beautiful and freezing.

Booking ahead is non-negotiable. There are no hotels within 35 km and the next village’s only hostal closed after the owner retired in 2019.

When to Come and When to Stay Away

April–May turns the surrounding wheat luminous green; wild irises spot the roadside and the air smells of resin and orange blossom. September delivers golden stubble fields and mild evenings perfect for outside dining. Mid-July to mid-August is furnace-hot, and the village’s handful of returnees host a modest fiesta around the 15th: mass under a canvas awning, a paella for forty, and late-night karaoke powered by a generator that drowns out the cicadas. Visitors are welcome but not catered for – turn up with your own chair and a bottle to share.

Winter brings proper cold. Night temperatures dip below –8 °C and the lanes ice over. Snow ploughs reach the main road eventually, not immediately. If you crave solitude and own a four-season sleeping bag, January can be magical; if you merely want a brisk country weekend, wait for March.

The Particular Joy of Nothing Happening

British travellers who measure a destination by its tick-list will leave within an hour. Calabazas offers no souvenir shops, no interpretive centre, no zip-wire over the pines. What it does offer is a gauge reset: the realisation that time can pass without notification pings and that horizon-wide silence is, in 2024, a luxury commodity. Bring walking boots, a paperback you’ve already read halfway, and enough food for the duration. Leave the Bluetooth speaker at home – the sparrows have the playlist sorted.