Torrecilla del Pinar

The first thing you smell is the resin. Long before the stone houses of Torrecilla del Pinar come into view, the hire-car air vents fill with the sharp, sweet scent of pine. At 870 metres above sea level, on the northern lip of Segovia’s Tierra de Pinares, the village sits in the middle of a forest that once paid wages, fed children and built roofs. The resin trade has almost gone, but the trees remain, thick enough to swallow phone signal and, on still nights, muffle even the church bell.

Drive in from the CL-601 and the road dips sharply, revealing a compact grid of ochre walls and clay tiles that looks smaller than its 180 souls. There is no car park; locals leave vehicles where the tarmac ends and walk the last hundred metres. Visitors do the same, brushing past rosemary that grows wild along the verges. By the time you reach the plaza, the altitude has made itself known: ears pop, lungs feel cleaner, and the summer heat that scorches Madrid ninety minutes south has thinned to something bearable.

What the Forest Gave, and Still Gives

The resineros have retired, yet their tools hang in the village bar—curved axes, tin gutters, bark-stripped wedges—like retired sailors’ trophies. Ask and someone will explain how a V-shaped cut bled the pines white, the raw resin carted to Cuéllar’s distillery for turpentine. Today the forest earns its keep through quieter means: mushrooms, honey and weekenders hungry for cochinillo. Between October and November the undergrowth turns gold and the níscalos appear, orange caps pushing through pine needles. Picking is tolerated provided the basket stays small and the knife is blunt; the village keeps an unofficial map of “heavy” and “light” zones, passed over coffee.

Walkers have three waymarked circuits. The shortest, 4 km, loops past the ruined resin ovens and returns along the dry stone sheep walls. The 9 km “Cuerda del Pino” gains 250 metres of gentle ascent, ending at a limestone outcrop where imperial eagles sometimes thermalled overhead last spring. All tracks start by the old laundry trough—look for the hand-painted frog on the wall—and all demand offline maps; signposts vanish once the pines close in.

Food That Forgets to Rush

There is no menu del día board swinging in the breeze. Instead, Mesón Conrado writes the day’s offer on a torn paper bag taped inside the door: roast suckling pig, judiones beans, or both. The chef is the owner’s daughter, back from Segovia city after the pandemic trimmed her restaurant job. Pig arrives pre-chopped, skin blistered into brittle shards that crack like thin ice; beans swim in a brick-red liquor sharpened with smoky pimentón. A glass of local Ribera del Duero—Tempranillo grown forty minutes north—costs €2.80, cheaper than airport coffee. Kitchen hours are rigid: food appears between 13:30 and 15:30, then again at 21:00. Arrive at 15:31 and you’ll be offered wine while they finish sweeping the floor.

Supplies are otherwise limited. The village shop opens 09:00-13:00, shuts for siesta, and reopens 17:30-20:00. Bread sells out by 10:30; after that you drive fifteen minutes to Nava de la Asunción’s supermarket. There is no cash machine—draw euros in Cuéllar before turning off the A-1 or you’ll be paying for dinner with the notes stuffed in your passport.

When the Day-Trippers Leave

August fiestas treble the headcount. Madrilenños with grandparents’ keys return, string lights zig-zag across the plaza, and someone wheels a sound system out of a garage. For three nights the village is noisy by its own standards: music ends at 02:00, children still chase footballs under the lights, and the bakery runs out of cortados by 09:00. Then August ends, cars with city plates disappear, and the pine needles absorb the echo.

The rest of the year silence is the main amenity. Nights get properly dark—streetlights are switched off at midnight to save the council €140 a month—and on new-moon evenings the Milky Way drapes overhead like spilled sugar. Bring a jacket even in July; the altitude drops temperatures to 12 °C once the wind turns northerly. Winter brings proper snow two or three times, enough to cut the road for half a day and send children sledging on tractor lids. If you’re renting the timber cabin outside the village, pack chains; the final kilometre is a dirt track that turns to porridge.

Getting Here, and Knowing When Not To

Fly London-Stansted to Madrid, collect a car at Terminal 1, and head north on the A-1. After the Cuéllar exit the motorway empties, and the last twenty minutes wind through forest so uniform you’ll swear the sat-nav has frozen. Public transport is the school bus that leaves Cuéllar at 07:15 and returns at 14:30—useful only if you fancy eight hours sitting on the plaza bench. Sunday visits require planning: the bakery-café is the only business open, lunch needs booking the day before, and the village shop shuts completely.

Spring and early autumn give the kindest light for photographers and the softest trails underfoot. May brings daytime highs of 22 °C and nights cool enough for the wood-burner in Casa Rural La Torrecilla, the 17th-century house on the corner of Calle Real. Rates drop by a third after mid-September, and mushroom pickers replace families with beach gear. In October the forest smells of wet earth and caramelising leaves; by November mist pools in the valleys and the first frost bronzes the wild thyme.

Torrecilla del Pinar will not entertain you after 23:00. It will not sell you fridge magnets or offer zip-lines through the canopy. What it does, with unapologetic consistency, is give you the sound of wind through resinous needles, pork crackling that shatters at first bite, and a sky so clear you’ll notice satellites drifting past Orion. Bring walking boots, cash and a sense of when to switch off—everything else the pines already provide.