Villar del Río

The church bell strikes noon and the only reply is a Labrador wagging its tail outside the bar. Villar del Río has roughly the same headcount as a London commuter train at 7 a.m.—155 souls—yet it stretches across one kilometre of the CL-116, the high-plateau road that links Soria with Aranda de Duero. Drivers shoot past at 90 km/h, see the stone houses, think “quaint,” and accelerate towards lunch. Pause and you’ll notice the dinosaur footprints painted on the tarmac: the village sits on a ridge of Cretaceous rock, and the small Aula Paleontológica above the grocer’s will let you handle 110-million-year-old oyster fossils for the price of a coffee.

High-plateau living, 1 050 m up

Altitude matters here. Frost can bite until mid-May, and August nights drop to 12 °C—bring a jumper even in high summer. The air is so clear that telephone masts on the next hill, 8 km away, look arm’s reach away, which also means there is nowhere to hide when the wind arrives. Winter brings snow that the council clears reluctantly; if you’re renting, a front-wheel-drive car with decent tyres is sensible between December and March. Spring and early autumn are the sweet spots: warm afternoons, cold beers, zero coach parties.

Stone and adobe houses line a single main street that tilts gently towards the stone bridge over the dry Río Razón. Most façades are neat, a few are shuttered forever—inheritance disputes, rural exodus, the usual story. Wooden balconies hold geraniums; corrugated gates hide barns where wheat once met threshing sledges. The parish church, rebuilt after a 19th-century lightning strike, keeps its Romanesque doorway; the key hangs in the bar if you want to step inside. No gift shop, no audio guide, just the smell of wax and a 16th-century Virgin whose face was sanded smooth by someone’s over-enthusiastic restoration.

Footpaths, fossils and the long view

Three way-marked walks leave from the football field at the village edge. The shortest (5 km, yellow dashes) loops through wheat stubble to an abandoned cortijo where storks nest on the chimney. The red walk (12 km) drops into the oak-filled valley of the Razón and climbs back up an old drove road used until the 1960s for moving sheep to winter pasture. Signposting is sparse—download the GPX file at the regional tourism site before you set off, because phone coverage vanishes once you dip below the rim. Expect to see red kites rather than people; if the sky darkens, head back—thunderstorms here arrive fast and the track turns to slick clay.

Mushroom hunters visit in October half-term, baskets in hand. Locals rate the níscalos (saffron milk-caps) in the pine plantation 3 km north, but you need a regional permit (€5, sold online) and a scales mindset: the daily limit is 3 kg. The bar owner, Jesús, will fry your haul with garlic if you ask before 20:00 and tip him a handful.

One bar, one hotel, no petrol

Eating choices fit on a A4 sheet pinned behind the counter. Hotel Villa de la Peña’s menú del día costs €14 and delivers three courses, half a bottle of Ribera del Duero, and no choice beyond “lamb or chicken?” The lamb chops arrive pink only if you whisper “poco hecho” while ordering; otherwise they’re cooked through, Castilian style. Vegetarians get a thick potato tortilla; vegans should pack sandwiches. House wine is young, fruity and 13%—driveable if you sip, risky if you don’t. Tea is a teabag in a glass of hot milk; embrace the Spanish version or order coffee.

Supplies: the Ultramarinos opens 09:00-14:00 and stocks UHT milk, tinned tuna, local cheese wrapped in newspaper. Bread arrives at 11:00; if you want a baguette for the trail, queue early. There is no cash machine—plastic works in the bar, but the shop takes cash only. Nearest fuel is 28 km east in El Burgo de Osma; the low-fuel light is not a suggestion here.

Cinema credentials and the fiesta trap

Villar del Río played itself in Luis García Berlanga’s 1953 film Bienvenido, Mr. Marshall. The satire—villagers dress as Andalusians to impress American diplomats—still screens every 15 August in the plaza on a bedsheet. That weekend also hosts the local fiesta: brass bands until 03:00, fireworks that rattle windows, and a paella for 200 served in the schoolyard. Accommodation triples in price; light sleepers should book in Bódquez de Arriba, 6 km away, and drive in for the show. Outside fiesta week the village resets to library-quiet—perfect if you want the plaza to yourself, frustrating if you’re after tapas tours.

Getting there, getting away

From the UK the quickest route is fly to Madrid, collect a hire car, and head north on the A-2 then the N-234 (signed CL-116 at El Burgo de Osma). Total driving time: two hours on fast dual-carriageway, 25 minutes on empty mountain road. Public transport is academic: one Alsa bus pauses at 15:10 on schooldays, returns at 06:45 next morning. Useful only if you fancy a 14-hour stopover.

Most visitors treat Villar del Río as a half-day punctuation mark between the medieval walls of Soria and the Ribera del Duero vineyards. That is realistic: you can see the church, drink a vermouth, watch the dinosaur video, and be back on the road by tea time. Stay overnight, though, and you’ll witness the high plateau perform its daily colour chart—ochre at dawn, titanium white at noon, bruised violet when the storm rolls in. Just remember to buy petrol before you arrive; the only thing flatter than the landscape is your wallet if the recovery truck has to haul you to the nearest pump.