Aldealices

The church bell tolls twelve times, yet nobody appears. At 1,130 metres above sea level, Aldealices keeps its own timetable: the bakery shut a decade ago, the school even earlier, and the single bar opens only when its owner feels like company. Twenty-three residents remain, give or take whoever has driven to Soria for the weekly shop, and the silence between bell strokes is wide enough to park a tractor in.

This is Spain stripped of postcards. The village squats on a ridge in the Tierras Altas, a region so empty that golden eagles outnumber people most afternoons. Dry-stone walls divide wheat stubble from fallow fields; the horizon is a ruler-drawn line of holm oaks that barely reach shoulder height after centuries of wind. Come January, when Siberian highs settle over the plateau, thermometers plunge to –15 °C and drifting snow can cut the road for days. August brings the opposite ordeal: 35 °C by mid-morning, shadeless paths, and a sun that turns village roofs into a blinding limestone reef.

Stone, Timber and Survival Architecture

No architect ever “designed” Aldealices; the place simply thickened around the church like frost on a window. Houses are built from whatever the ground offered: soft grey caliza quarried a kilometre away, oak beams hewn from the same trees that feed the village’s stoves, and clay tiles fired in nearby Retortillo. The result is a palette of muted greys and rust-browns that merges with the winter landscape so well that, on overcast days, the whole settlement seems to dissolve into the hillside.

Look closely and you’ll see how form follows thermometer. Doorways are narrow and deeply recessed, giving livestock somewhere to huddle during blizzards. Chimneys rise three feet above rooflines so that sparks clear the thatch that nobody can afford to replace. Many roofs still carry their original stone weights—rough discs drilled in the centre—left over from the days when every family grew hemp for rope. These details survive because nobody has had the money, or the heart, to knock them down.

The medieval core is intact enough that detouring down a side alley can feel like trespassing. One house carries a 1639 datestone above a doorway now too low for anyone taller than five-foot-six; another has a stable manger built into the street wall so that pack mules could be fed without unhitching. There are no information boards, no QR codes, no gift-shop. If you want the story, you must ask the woman leaning from the upstairs window to shake her rug—she is probably descended from the original mason.

Walking Where the Maps Run Out

Footpaths radiate from the plaza like spokes, but only two appear on the IGNE 1:50,000 sheet. The rest are agricultural tracks used by farmers who still sow wheat and barley in strips too small for machinery. Follow any of them for twenty minutes and you will understand why locals talk about distance in terms of time, not kilometres: the ground rolls like a gentle swell until it meets the pine-dark bulk of the Pinares de Soria, and every rise conceals another valley of identical colour.

A sensible circuit heads south-east towards the abandoned hamlet of Valdelavilla, four kilometres away. The route drops 200 metres through holm-oak scrub, crosses the icy stream of the Río Razón, then climbs again to a ridge where griffon vultures ride thermals at eye level. Allow two hours, carry water, and do not rely on phone coverage—there isn’t any. In May the verges are thick with wild thyme and the last of the irises; by July everything has been bleached the colour of bone.

Autumn brings a different audience. From mid-October, cars with Madrid plates appear at weekends carrying wicker baskets and knives in leather sheaths. These are the seteros, mushroom hunters who know exactly which clearings produce níscalos (saffron milk-caps) and setas de cardo (pleurotus eryngii). They will not welcome company, and anyone wandering the woods with a plastic carrier bag will be marked instantly as an outsider. Permits are not required, but the regional government limits the daily haul to three kilos per person and bans collection in the Pinares reserve itself—worth knowing if you prefer not to be escorted back to the village by an irate guardia civil.

Eating (or Not) on the High Plateau

Aldealices has no café, no restaurant, no shop. The last baker retired when his wood-fired oven collapsed in 2014 and nobody volunteered to rebuild it. If you intend to stay longer than an afternoon, stock up in Soria, 38 minutes away by car. Mercadona on the Avenida de Valladolid sells everything from chuletón steaks to gluten-free bread, while the covered market (open mornings except Monday) has local cheese labelled simply “oveja”—a hard, nutty ewe’s milk variety that keeps for weeks if you let it breathe.

For a sit-down meal, drive twelve kilometres north to Navafría, where Asador El Chiscón grills Segovian suckling lamb over holm-oak embers. Half a kilo portion serves two generously, arrives with only a wedge of lemon and a plate of roast potatoes, and costs €24. They open weekends year-round, but call +34 975 36 30 46 before you set out—if the owner’s family is celebrating a communion, the dining room closes early.

Back in Aldealices you can still taste history if you time your visit for the third weekend of September, when the fiesta de San Millán lures home emigrants from Zaragoza, Barcelona, even Manchester. Someone produces a steel cauldron, someone else donates a lamb, and by noon half the village is peeling potatoes in the plaza. The resulting cocido is served in plastic bowls to anyone who happens to be passing; wine from Calatayud arrives in five-litre jerry cans. When the eating ends, the accordion appears, and the dancing begins on a stage made from two pallets and a tarpaulin. By midnight the temperature has dropped to single figures, but nobody notices until the generator splutters out.

Getting There, Staying Warm

Public transport is a memory. The weekday bus that once linked Aldealices to Soria was axed in 2011, victim of rural austerity. Without a car you are looking at a €70 taxi ride each way—assuming you can persuade a driver to make the return journey on ice. Hire from Europcar at Soria railway station; petrol is usually ten cents a litre cheaper in town than on the A-15 motorway.

Accommodation is limited to three self-catering cottages grouped under the name La Casa de los Olmos. Each sleeps four, has under-floor heating (essential), and costs from €90 per night with a two-night minimum. The owner, Pilar, lives in the adjoining house and will deliver freshly laid eggs if you ask politely. She also keeps the only set of snow chains for kilometres, a fact worth remembering if forecasters mention Filomena or any other storm named after a Greek grandmother.

Winter visitors should carry a sleeping-bag in the car even for day trips; roads have been blocked until April before. Summer walkers need factor-50 and three litres of water per person—the altitude and breeze disguise fluid loss. Spring and autumn are kinder, but pack a fleece whatever the calendar says: at these heights weather arrives sideways and without warning.

Leave before dawn on your final morning and you will see why people stay. The eastern sky turns from bruise-purple to copper, the stone walls glow like hot coals, and for a few minutes the village looks almost habitable. Then the sun clears the ridge, the wind picks up, and Aldealices settles back into its long, quiet conversation with the sky.