San Bartolomé de Pinares

The first thing you notice is the quiet. Not silence – the wind still moves through the pines and dogs bark at unfamiliar number plates – but the absence of background hum. At 1,100 metres above sea level, San Bartolomé de Pinares sits high enough for your ears to pop on the drive up, and the air carries the sharp scent of resin that makes Yorkshire moorland smell almost sweet by comparison.

This is farming country, not a resort. Five hundred souls live among the stone houses that line three short streets, and the forest presses in on every side. The village functions as a working centre for the surrounding fincas: tractors appear at first light, farmers stop for coffee in the only bar that opens before ten, and the petrol pump next to the church dispenses fuel until the owner locks up for lunch. Visitors who expect souvenir shops or guided walks will be disappointed; those who arrive with boots and a taste for beef stew generally stay longer than planned.

Winter Fire, Summer Shade

Most foreigners who have heard of San Bartolomé know one date: 16 January. On the eve of San Antón the village hosts Las Luminarias, a festival older than any health-and-safety manual. By mid-afternoon the narrow streets are piled with scrub and old vine cuttings. At sunset the bonfires are lit, and for the next six hours horses – many ridden by children – walk, trot and occasionally bolt through the flames while the crowd drinks gratis wine from plastic cups. The smoke is thick, the sparks are real, and the veterinary checks are cursory. It is, as one Camino walker from Leeds put it, “like Bonfire Night with added danger and better meat.”

Rooms within a 30-kilometre radius are booked a year in advance by Madrid families who treat the event as a winter reunion. Turn up without a reservation and you will sleep in the car. Worse, the single cash machine in the next village usually empties by lunchtime, and the bar-tabac’s card reader overheats under the strain. Bring euros, a torch, and clothes you are happy to burn afterwards because the smell of pine smoke never quite washes out.

Summer delivers a different village entirely. Daytime temperatures stay five degrees cooler than Madrid, and the forest provides 360-degree shade. Local families escape the capital at weekends, filling the stone barbecue areas beside the pine-scented picnic meadow on the north edge of town. The council keeps the public pool filled from late June to early September; entry is two euros and the lifeguard doubles as the baker’s son. Mountain-bike tracks, way-marked only by the occasional paint splash, fan out towards the snow pits – shallow stone circles where ice was once harvested for city markets. Follow any track uphill for twenty minutes and you will meet no-one except the odd mushroom hunter checking boletus stems with a penknife.

Beef, Beans and Beehives

Food is not fancy but it is filling. Hostal El Chato, opposite the stone fountain, serves chuleón de Ávila – a single rib of local beef that hangs over the plate like a small canoe. One portion feeds two hungry walkers and still costs less than a Pret sandwich and flat white. Judiones, butter-white beans stewed with pork belly and nothing remotely spicy, appear on every Thursday menu. Vegetarians get tortilla, salad or both; vegans should stock up in Ávila before the climb.

Breakfast options are limited. The bakery opens at seven, sells out of pastries by eight-thirty, and closes when the owner feels like it. Buy the pine-blossom honey sold from the house with blue shutters beside the church: the beekeeper will insist you taste it from the jar, and the resinous flavour works surprisingly well on supermarket toast back home. The local cider, bottled just down the mountain in El Barraco, is low-alcohol and apple-sweet; think Somerset without the funk.

Tuesday is the dead day. Both food shops pull steel shutters over their doors, the pharmacy keeps Spanish hours (nine-thirty to one, four-thirty to seven), and even the dogs seem to sleep in. Plan ahead, or you will be eating crisps for supper.

Maps, Miles and Mobile Signal

Walking starts literally outside your door. A web of unsignposted caminos links the village to abandoned snow pits, viewpoints and, eventually, the main ridgeline of the Sierra de Ávila. The classic circuit heads south-east along the track marked “Pozo de Nieve” – look for the yellow arrow painted on a dustbin – then loops back via the Ermita de San Roque. Total distance is eight kilometres, elevation gain 250 metres, and the only facilities are a stone trough fed by a cold spring halfway round. In wet weather the red clay sticks to boots like Cumbrian peat; in July the shade is welcome but carry more water than you think necessary because the spring sometimes dries up.

Mobile coverage is patchy. Vodafone and EE drop out two kilometres before the village; Movistar works if you stand on the church steps and face north. Download offline maps, and remember that the emergency number is 112, not 999.

Drivers arrive via the AV-941, a single-carriageway switchback that climbs 400 metres in twelve kilometres. The tarmac is decent but meeting a timber lorry on a hairpin keeps the pulse high. In January bonfire ash turns the surface greasy; in August the sun blinds you on every other bend. Winter tyres are not mandatory, but chains fit in the boot will save a turnaround if snow arrives overnight. The council grades the road promptly, yet it still pays to be first down the mountain before the melt refreezes.

After the Last Pine

Stay longer than a weekend and the village begins to reveal its rhythms. The priest unlocks the church at six for evening mass; the bell rings eight times even if only three pensioners turn up. Farmers gather on the plaza benches at dusk, discussing rainfall the way Britons discuss football. On clear nights the sky delivers Milky Way views normally reserved for Northumberland, and the tiny observatory above the picnic ground – really a telescope bolted to a concrete plinth – is left unlocked. Bring a head-torch with a red filter and you can stay until the cold drives you indoors.

Leave too early and risk missing the detail that makes the place memorable: the way wood smoke pools in the hollow below the church at dawn, or the sound of hooves on stone when the local riding school exercises its ponies along the main street. San Bartolomé will never feature on a “Top Ten Spanish Villages” list, and that is precisely its appeal. Come prepared, respect the altitude, and the pines will do the rest.