Lastras de Cuéllar

The resin tapper’s ladder leans against a Scots pine at seven-thirty sharp, its metal spikes already warm from the rising sun. From the village square you can watch him climb, slice a new groove into the bark and fix the small clay cup that will drip amber until dusk. No guidebook mentions this; it is simply the weekday alarm clock for the forty-odd households that still call Lastras de Cuéllar home.

Flat Stones and Forest Time

The name “Lastras” refers to the pale limestone slabs that farmers once prised out of the ground to build walls, pig sites and wine cellars. You will notice them straight away: they pave the lanes, prop open doors and form the lintels of houses whose adobe bricks have turned the colour of digestive biscuits. Nothing here rises above two storeys, so the vertical element is provided entirely by the pine trunks that circle the settlement like a stockade. The effect is less picture-postcard, more workaday courtyard—an honest buffer against the summer furnace of the Castilian plateau.

Altitude is 940 m, high enough for crisp dawns even in July and for night frosts to nip the rosemary until late April. The climate is dry—around 450 mm of rain in a good year—so when a weather front does arrive the smell of wet resin sweeps through the streets like someone spilling gin. Bring layers: a May midday can touch 24 °C while the same evening demands a fleece.

A Church with No Notices and Two Bars with No Menus

The parish church of San Juan Bautista keeps its doors unlocked only until eleven; after that the priest cycles off to Cuéllar and you are left with the swallows. Inside, the single-nave interior is white-washed, the baroque altar gilded in what locals call “oatmeal gold” because the pigment was once mixed with coarse flour to save money. There is no ticket desk, no postcards, just a visitors’ book that last week contained signatures from Valladolid, Zaragoza and one couple from Kent who wrote “quiet as an English parish at evensong.”

Refreshment is handled by two bars, both on Calle Real. Neither prints a menu; the owner tells you what the stove is doing. A half-ración of lechazo—milk-fed lamb roasted in a wood-fired clay oven—runs to €9 if you ask for medio, sensible for two lunching lightly. Sopa castellana arrives thick with smoked paprika and a poached egg that breaks like custard over the bread. Beer is served in cañas (200 ml) for €1.20; wine comes from a 20-litre garrafón behind the bar and costs even less. One catch: both establishments shut on random Mondays and neither opens again before 19:30, so time your appetite accordingly.

Paths that Remember Sheep

From the last streetlamp a network of cañadas reales—ancient drove roads—rolls north towards Tierra de Pinares. The surface is sandy limestone, fine for trainers or hybrid tyres and almost dead flat. A 6-km circuit east to the seasonal lagoon of Lagunas de Lastras takes 90 minutes at dawdling speed; herons arrive in April and stay until the water bakes off sometime in July. Cyclists can stitch together a 40-km day, linking Lastras with Villanueva de Cuéllar and the Roman bridge at Soria, all on secondary roads where a passing car is event enough to make you look up.

If you prefer walking, follow the white-and-yellow waymarks of the SL-SO variant that leaves from the cemetery gate. It threads through stone pine for an hour, then drops into the Arroyo de Valdeprados where wild asparagus pushes through the grit in late March. There are no climbs worthy of the name, yet the trail is exposed: carry at least a litre of water per person between May and September, more if the wind is lifting dust off the plain.

Autumn Gold, Winter Silence

October is mushroom season. níscalos—delicious saffron-milk caps—hide under pine needles after the first autumn soak, and villagers guard their patches with the same loyalty a Hereford gardener shows his asparagus bed. Spanish law allows each picker two kilos per day; foreign visitors are welcome but fines for over-collection start at €300 and the local Seprona officers patrol on quiet scramblers. If you want guidance, Cuéllar’s tourist office runs Saturday forays for €25 including permit, basket and insurance—book by Thursday afternoon, in Spanish, by phone.

January is the inverse picture: blue skies, minus-four nights and streets so silent you hear the church bell toll twelve even when you’re walking on the opposite edge of town. Guest rooms are cheap—€35 for a double at Pensión El Pinar—but heating is by pellet stove and you will be shown how to top it up. Snow is rare; when it does arrive the SG-205 becomes a toboggan run and the village shops—both of them—sell out of bread by ten. Carry snow socks if you fancy a winter visit; the council only ploughs once the drifts pass 10 cm.

Getting There, Getting Cash, Getting Out

Madrid-Barajas to Lastras is 156 km, almost all motorway. Collect a hire car from Terminal 1, swing onto the A-1, peel off at junction 104 (Arévalo) and follow the N-110 to Cuéllar; from there the SG-205 wriggles 20 km through pine corridors until the church tower appears. Allow 95 minutes unless you meet a lorry convoy outside Arévalo, where overtaking is impossible for 8 km.

There is no petrol station, cashpoint or pharmacy in the village. Fill the tank and your wallet in Cuéllar before you turn off; the nearest 24-h ATM is outside the Santander branch on Plaza Mayor. Mobile coverage is patchy: Movistar functions in the square, Vodafone and EE fade once you pass the last house—download offline maps in the hotel Wi-Fi before you head out.

An Honest Exit

Some visitors leave after one night, content to have added “rural Spain” to their life list. Others stay four days, lulled by the resinous hush and the fact that nothing, absolutely nothing, is demanded of them except to be quiet when the resin tapper climbs his ladder at dawn. Lastras de Cuéllar will not change your life, but it might slow your pulse—and on the drive back to the airport the scent of pine drifting through the air-conditioning will remind you that somewhere on the plateau the clay cups are still filling, drip by amber drip, long after the guidebooks run out of pages.