Arévalo de la Sierra

The church bell strikes noon, yet nobody quickens their pace. An elderly man in a flat cap shuffles across the single paved road, stopping mid-stride to watch a red squirrel dart up a Scots pine. In Arévalo de la Sierra, 1,209 metres above sea level, the day is still young even when it’s half finished.

Seventy-one souls are registered here, though on most weekdays you’ll count fewer. The village sits on a south-facing ridge in the Tierras Altas of Soria, a province so empty that wolves outnumber waiters. Stone houses with weather-beaten timber balconies lean into the slope as if sheltering from a wind that never quite arrives. Roof tiles the colour of burnt toast funnel the scarce rainfall into stone cisterns; the gutters still carry the iron rings where livestock were once tethered during winter storms.

Up Where the Air Thins and the Stone Thickens

Winter arrives early and overstays. From November to March the road from Molinos de Razón (24 kilometres of switch-backs) is glazed with black ice before breakfast; locals fit chains as casually as Londoners pop up umbrellas. Snow can cut the place off for two-day stretches, a fact the village wears with stubborn pride. The municipal plough is stored in a corrugated-iron shed next to the cemetery—both kept in equally good repair.

Come May, however, the same altitude becomes a refuge. While Madrid swelters at 36°C, Arévalo hovers at a breathable 22°C. Britons accustomed to Dartmoor will recognise the light: sharp, high-luminosity, making every holm oak shadow look inked in. Thermals are still advised after dusk—temperatures plummet fifteen degrees the moment the sun slips behind the Sierra de Cebollera.

Walking boots, not flip-flops, are the sensible choice. The village square is level, but every lane tilts at 12 per cent or more; builders long ago gave up trying to fit two consecutive horizontal steps together. Public benches face south for good reason: the wind that scours the plateau can skin knuckles even in June.

A Parish Church That Grew Like Lichen

Iglesia de San Juan Bautista began as a ninth-century watchtower, sprouted a Romanesque nave in the twelfth, then acquired a Baroque tower after a lightning fire in 1743. No guidebook superstar, yet the interior holds a curiosity worth the 50-cent donation: a wooden statue of St James whose left boot has been rubbed shiny by centuries of shepherds asking for safe passage to summer pastures. Sunday mass is at 11:00; visitors are welcomed but expected to stay for the full twenty-five minutes—no sneaking out after communion.

Opposite the church, the former primary school (closed 1978) has been turned into an informal ethnography museum. Push the green door; if it’s unlocked, climb the stone staircase to a single classroom where inkwells still wait for dip-pens. A hand-written card asks for €2 in an honesty box. The caretaker, Martina, lives three doors down and will appear within five minutes if she hears footsteps—she enjoys practising the English she learned as a nanny in Sheffield in the 1960s.

Paths That Remember Hooves

Maps are optimistic here. The PR-26 way-marked trail supposedly loops 8 kilometres to the abandoned hamlet of Majada Vieja, yet blazes vanish whenever the path enters a pine plantation. Download the GPX file while you still have 4G in Calatañazor—coverage drops to SOS-only two kilometres out of the village. The walking itself is gentle: forest tracks wide enough for a tractor, gradients that rarely top 200 metres, and the constant soundtrack of chaffinches. Roe deer appear at dawn; boar diggings scar the verges but the animals themselves are shy.

After heavy rain the clay becomes a skating rink. Local wisdom: if your boot sinks deeper than the lug, turn back; the red earth will cake like Birmingham brick and add half a kilo to each foot within minutes. Spring and late October are the reliable windows. In September the beech woods above 1,400 metres ignite into copper—Spanish leaf-peeping without the New England price tag.

What Passes for Lunch

There is no café in Arévalo itself. The sole bar, Casa Galo, opens at 07:00 for coffee and churros, then shuts once the owner drives his wife to the doctor in Soria—sometimes that’s 10:30, sometimes noon. Ring the bell; if the mastiff barks but nobody appears, you’re officially out of luck. Carry calories.

Six kilometres east, in the slightly larger village of Navaleno, Mesón de Óscar serves a three-course menú del día for €14 mid-week. Expect garlic soup thick enough to stand a spoon, roast lamb that slides off the bone, and a half-bottle of Ribera del Duero included. Vegetarians get a roasted red-pepper terrine; vegans should ask for judiones (giant butter beans) stewed with saffron—chef will oblige if you phone the day before.

If self-catering, the Friday-morning van that toots through the square at 11:00 sells fish from the Cantabrian coast: hake at €9 a kilo, tiny squid for tortilla at €6. Bring cash; the proprietor’s card reader “only works when it’s warm”.

When the Village Rewinds Itself

Fiesta week is 12–16 August. The population balloons to perhaps 300 as descendants return from Zaragoza, Barcelona, even Swindon. A sound system appears in the square, playing 1980s Spanish pop at a volume that makes the church bells seem polite. Bull-running takes place in a makeshift ring of hay bales; tickets cost €5 and sell out by word of mouth on the first morning. Outsiders are welcome, but photography during the run is discouraged—last year an over-eager Instagrammer got butted into the medical tent.

Book accommodation now if you fancy the fiesta; afterwards you can have the village to yourself again. The remaining calendar is whisper-quiet: a procession on 24 June for St John, when locals walk carrying sprigs of mountain lavender, and a chestnut roast on 1 November that lasts exactly as long as the woodpile holds out.

Beds, Butterflies and Bringing the Right Car

Staying overnight means either renting a cottage or driving 25 minutes to the nearest hotel. Three village houses have been restored by owners who live in Madrid and let them out when they’re not escaping the capital. Expect stone floors, wood-burning stoves, Wi-Fi that clocks 12 Mbps on a still night, and ceilings low enough for a six-footer to practise ducking. Prices hover round €80 a night for two, minimum stay two nights; search “Casas Rurales Tierras Altas” and specify Arévalo—otherwise you’ll be offered properties 60 kilometres away.

Access is the sticking point. A standard hire car will scrape its underside on the final kilometre of concrete ramp if you meet a reversing Transit. Bring something with 15 cm of clearance, or at least nerve enough to straddle the central ridge. Diesel drivers should top up in Calatañazor; the village pump closed in 2009 and the nearest fuel is 28 kilometres back towards the N-122.

The Quiet Bill

Arévalo de la Sierra will not change your life. It offers no zip-wires, no artisan gin distillery, no gift shop selling fridge magnets shaped like bulls. What it does offer is a yardstick against which to measure everywhere else: a place where the bakery vanished decades ago yet nobody complains, where the evening news is still read aloud in the bar, and where the hills smell of thyme and cow bells. Turn up expecting grand attractions and you’ll leave within an hour. Turn up prepared to match the tempo—walk, look, listen—and the village repays with a clarity of silence that even Dartmoor can’t quite match these days.