La Lastrilla

The No. 3 bus from Segovia drops you beside a stone church whose bell strikes the hour exactly five minutes after the Aqueduct’s own chime fades. In that gap you have crossed from World Heritage queues to a place where locals still nod at strangers and the evening air smells of pine smoke and roasting lamb. La Lastrilla sits 1,020 m above sea level on a limestone shelf six kilometres north of Segovia, close enough for a €10 taxi yet far enough for hotel prices to fall by a third.

A village that grew up, not old

Flat slabs of stone – lastras – gave the settlement its name and still clad the oldest houses huddled round the Plaza de la Constitución. The streets were laid out in the 1950s for quarry workers, so the grid is tidy rather than medieval. Walk one block east and you reach Avenida de los Huertos, where new apartment blocks have sprouted above underground garages. The mix is honest: this is commuter Castilla, not a museum piece. Children kick footballs against the church wall while their grandparents occupy the benches, coats buttoned against the plateau wind even in April.

San Juan Bautista, the sixteenth-century parish, anchors the village. Inside, a polychrome altarpiece shows Saint John dunking diminutive Christ in the River Jordan; the carving is crude but the colours survive, egg-yolk yellow and ox-blood red still vivid after four centuries. Drop a euro in the box and the sacristan will switch on the lights for two minutes – long enough to notice that every capital is carved with a different pattern of acanthus leaves, the masons competing for pride rather than payment.

The mesa at your feet

From the mirador behind the church the land falls away in wheat-coloured waves. In May the cereal stripes green-gold; by late June the combine harvesters crawl like bright beetles, throwing dust into the long evening light. Beyond the fields the pine ridges of the Guadarrama rise to 2,000 m, snow-dusted until Easter. The contrast explains why Segovians buy weekend flats here: you get the wide sky of the meseta without surrendering the prospect of proper mountains twenty minutes up the road.

Paths strike out across the stubble. One hour’s loop south brings you to the abandoned limestone kilns of El Tablado, brick chimneys now housing kestrels. Another trail, way-marked with yellow and white stripes, heads north-east through holm-oak to the village of Zamarramala, where women once elected their own mayor during mid-winter fiestas. Neither route will appear in glossy hiking catalogues; gradients are gentle, signage sporadic, and you may share the track only with a man on a quad bike checking irrigation pipes. That, of course, is the appeal.

Eating like a quarryman

Segovia’s culinary headline is cochinillo – suckling pig crisp enough to carve with the edge of a plate. The town’s asadores guard the tradition jealously, but they also charge €45 for the privilege. In La Llastrilla you can order a quarter portion at Asador David Guijarro on Calle Real for €18 and still watch the ceremonial plate-snap. The meat arrives glistening, skin bubbled like burnt cream, with a moat of roast potatoes that have absorbed the fat. Locals wash it down with a €2.50 caña of Mahou; the prudent driver opts for tinto de verano, a spritzy red-lemonade that tastes like Ribena for grown-ups.

If pig feels too medieval, Casa Macario will grill a chuletón of beef for two (€35) or, without fuss, serve steak frites to teenagers who have hit their jamón limit. Dessert stays resolutely Castilian: rosquillas – doughnut rings scented with aniseed – and a glass of thick chocolate so the biscuits dissolve just enough to require a spoon. Coffee comes in glasses, not cups, and the bill still arrives hand-written on a green duplicate pad.

Sunday morning adds a different flavour. From nine o’clock the rastro spreads along the football pitch: second-hand bikes, out-of-date routers, boxes of la Mancha saffron past its best-before. It feels like a British car-boot sale in stronger sunlight, complete with the same half-broken board games. Bargain hunters drift off happily after half an hour, clutching €5 cast-iron pans that will never fit into carry-on luggage.

Using the village as a base

Staying here only makes sense if Segovia is your target. Alcázar tickets sell out by 11 a.m. at weekends; sleep in La Lastrilla, book the 09:00 slot online, and you glide past the queue that snakes down the Plaza del Azoguejo. Afterwards, escape before the tour-bus hordes re-board: hop on the No. 3 back to La Lastrilla for lunch, then return at dusk when the Aqueduct is flood-lit and selfie-free.

Winter visitors should pack layers. At a thousand metres January nights drop to –5 °C, and the mesa wind slices through denim. Hotels switch on heating at dusk; ask for an extra blanket rather than cranking the thermostat to sauna level. Summer, conversely, is dry and hot but rarely suffocating; 28 °C at midday falls to 15 °C after midnight, so leave the window open and you will sleep under a duvet even in August.

Drivers appreciate the free parking behind the Polideportivo; from there it is a three-minute walk to anywhere in the village. Do not attempt to stroll into Segovia – the N-110 has no pavement and local cars treat the hard shoulder as an extra lane. Cyclists fare better: a segregated path starts at the roundabout by the Eroski hypermarket and rolls gently downhill to the city in fifteen minutes, saving both petrol and temper.

What you will not find

There is no waterfall to Instagram, no artisan chocolate workshop, no prehistoric cave. The souvenir shop sells school stationery alongside plastic replicas of the Aqueduct. Evenings are quiet enough to hear the church clock from any street corner, and the last bus back from Segovia departs at 22:30 – miss it and a taxi is your only option. Some travellers find all this too tepid; others discover that being somewhere normal, rather than spectacular, is exactly the antidote to a week of Spanish highlight-hopping.

Come June the village erupts into its fiestas patronales: foam parties in the square, brass bands that rehearse at full volume, and a procession where San Juan Bautista is carried past the very quarry that built his church. Fireworks bounce off the limestone apartments and the smell of gunpowder drifts through open windows until 3 a.m. If you crave silence, book elsewhere that weekend. If you want to see how Castilians celebrate when nobody is watching, pull up a plastic chair, order a warm vermouth, and accept that sleep is overrated.