Santa Cruz de Yanguas

The temperature drops four degrees as soon as you leave the main road. By the time the car noses onto the ridge, the Rio Yanguas is a silver thread 300 metres below and the only sound is the wind rattling the stone crosses that mark the village boundary. Santa Cruz de Yanguas sits on the roof of the province of Soria, and it feels like it.

Fifty-six residents, one church, no shop, no ATM, one bar that opens when the owner hears wheels on gravel. That is the inventory. Yet the place refuses to feel abandoned. Stone roofs still carry their original Arab tiles, timber doors are painted the same ox-blood colour they were in 1950, and every house keeps a neat pile of firewood stacked higher than the front step – winter lasts from October to May at this altitude. Walking through the single-lane centre takes seven minutes if you dawdle; longer if you stop to read the hand-painted tiles that explain why the dinosaur footprints down by the river are 120 million years old.

Romanesque air, Jurassic ground

The Iglesia de la Santa Cruz is locked for most of the week, but the key hangs on a nail inside the Casa del Cura next door. Ring the bell; the caretaker will wipe her hands on her apron before she lets you in. Inside, the church smells of beeswax and cold stone. Sixteenth-century fresco fragments survive on the north wall – blues made from lapis that must have travelled by mule from the Cantabrian coast. The font is older than the discovery of America; the wooden crucifix is younger than television. No guides, no ropes, no gift shop. Just you, the caretaker’s soft footfalls, and the wind humming through the keyhole.

Leave the village by the cattle grid at the lower end and you drop into the Cañón de Yanguas. A way-marked loop, the Ruta de las Icnitas, follows the river terrace for five kilometres. Half-way down you meet a life-size steel Stegosaur that clanks when the breeze moves its tail. Beyond it, real Ornithopod prints are baked into grey limestone: three-toed, forty centimetres across, spaced as if the animal were trotting. Children like to fit their Wellies inside the marks; adults tend to glance nervously at the overhanging cliff and wonder how much has crumbled since the Cretaceous. The path can be slick after rain – proper boots, not city trainers, are advised.

The high-plain calendar

April brings lapwings and the first daubs of green among the wheat stubble. By July the plain is blonde, the air thin and humming with grasshoppers. August nights drop to 12 °C even when Madrid is still above 30 °C at midnight – pack a fleece if you plan to stay for the star-party organised by the provincial astronomy group. September smells of crushed thyme and diesel as the combine harvesters crawl up from the valley. In January the road can be blocked for days; neighbours ski across fields to check on elderly shepherds. The council keeps a red plastic snow pole hammered into the verge: if you can’t see the tip, turn back.

There is no hotel. The solitary rental house, Casa de Arriba, sleeps four and costs €75 a night. The heating is a pellet stove that the owner lights for you at six; after that you’re on stocking duty. Hot water is reliable, Wi-Fi is not. Booking is done by WhatsApp and bank transfer – replies arrive within 24 hours if María has driven up the hill to get signal.

What to do when everything is shut

Siesta is observed with religious precision. Between 14:00 and 17:00 the only thing open is the sky. Plan accordingly. Mornings are for walking the high livestock tracks that link Santa Cruz with Yanguas, the county capital eight kilometres away. The route climbs gently along a limestone escarpment where griffon vultures ride thermals at eye level. You pass corrals built from slabs the size of gravestones, and the occasional stone hut whose roof has collapsed to reveal a neat cone of straw. No kiosks, no bins, no fellow hikers – carry water and take your rubbish back to the village.

Mid-day options are limited. The bar, La Chimenea, serves grilled chuletón de cordero (€14) cut from local churra sheep. Ask for it al punto if you dislike the Spanish habit of serving lamb still pink enough to bleat. House Ribera del Duero is €2.50 a glass and tastes better than many London pubs’ house claret. Pudding is usually bought-in flan; skip it and order the queso de oveja instead – mild, nutty, excellent with a drizzle of honey harvested from hives on the plateau edge.

Afternoons are best spent driving the five-kilometre unpaved track to the Ermita de San Bartolomé, a twelfth-century chapel wedged into a cliff. The door is always open, the interior always dark. Bring a torch to see the medieval graffiti: ships, crosses, and one unmistakable football shirt carved in 1982. Sit on the threshold; the silence is so complete you can hear your own pulse.

A word on logistics

Fill the tank in Soria – the last petrol is 35 kilometres away in Calatañazor. Withdraw cash there too; the nearest ATM is back down the switchbacks in Yanguas and it runs out of money at weekends. Mobile coverage is patchy: Movistar works on the ridge, Vodafone only if you stand on the picnic table beside the church. Download offline maps before you leave the N-111.

There is no public transport. A taxi from Soria costs €60 each way – economical only if you share. The road is paved but narrow; coaches are banned. In winter carry snow chains even if the sky is cobalt. The council ploughs sporadically and locals drive Land-Rovers that treat ditches as gentle suggestions.

Why bother?

Santa Cruz de Yanguas will not change your life. It offers no souvenir beyond the tread of limestone dust on your boots and the smell of woodsmoke in your hair. What it does give is a calibration point: a place where the horizon is still wider than the screen in your pocket, and where the night sky looks the way it did before light pollution was invented. Stay long enough to hear the church bell strike nine and you’ll understand why half the inhabitants have the same surname – leaving was always an option, but so was coming back.