Quintanas de Gormaz

The bar opens at seven, not for early commuters but for the shepherd who brings his own cup and the two British walkers who need their credencial stamped before the sun clears the cereal fields. By eight-thirty Quintanas de Gormaz has fallen silent again, the only movement a tractor heading out to top-dress wheat that ripples like a calm sea all the way to the sandstone horizon.

Altitude 937 m means the air is thin enough to make the first coffee taste better than anything you remember from the Costa, and cool enough in May that a fleece still feels sensible. The village sits on a slight rise above the Duero corridor, its stone houses huddled against winter winds that can knife down from the Soria plateau at minus fifteen. Walls are a metre thick, windows the size of post-boxes, roofs pitched to throw off the snow that occasionally arrives overnight and is gone by lunchtime.

There is no medieval gate, no mirador with explanatory panel, no gift shop. What you get is a grid of four streets, two of them unpaved, and a seventeenth-century church whose bell tolls the hour with the enthusiasm of someone who knows nobody is in a rush. The church door is usually open; inside, the air smells of candle wax and damp stone, the plaster peeling like old paint on a boat. A single sheet of A4 lists the weekly mass times and, in smaller type, the mobile number of the priest who drives over from El Burgo de Osma when numbers justify the diesel.

Walk the Camino del Cid eastwards and you will reach Quintanas after nineteen kilometres of empty track, no bar, no fountain, only the metallic cry of a skylark for company. The path follows an old drove road between low stone walls; in April the verges are studded with crimson poppies, in July they are baked to straw. British bloggers like to call this stretch “the void”, a term that sounds alarming until you realise the emptiness is deliberate, protected by regional law that forbids new building within two kilometres of the historic route.

The reward is a village that still functions as itself rather than a diorama. The ultramarinos opposite the church sells tinned tuna, washing powder, and those sticky pine-nut tarts that taste like a cross between baklava and a treacle tart. Opening hours are 09:30-11:00, 17:30-19:00, unless Rosa’s granddaughter has a school play, in which case a handwritten note reads “vuelvo pronto”. Stock up before you arrive; the next shop is seventeen kilometres away and the village cash machine was removed in 2018 after the only bank branch in Gormaz closed. Cards are accepted at the bar, reluctantly, with a minimum spend of €10 and the sort of facial expression normally reserved for people who bring their own teabags.

Food is Castilian, heavy on the animal and the oven. The house next to the church chimney smokes morcilla for three days after the November matanza; you can buy a ring for €4 if you catch the owner before he heads out to the fields. Across the lane, a small sign in the window advertises lechazo at weekends, roasted in a wood-fired clay horno until the skin blisters like fine crackling. Order half a kilo between two and you will also receive a plate of roasted peppers, bread that could double as ballast, and a tumbler of local red that costs €2 and tastes like honest Rioja without the marketing budget. Vegetarians get migas—breadcrumbs fried with garlic and grapes—filling, cheap, and surprisingly good after a morning on the trail.

Outside the village the land folds gently towards the Duero, a brown ribbon glimpsed only from the higher tracks. There are no dramatic peaks, no vertiginous gorge, just an endless succession of wheat, barley, and fallow fields where great bustards step delicately between the stubble. A circular walk south climbs to an abandoned stone hut at 1,050 m; from the doorway you can see thirty kilometres across the province, the castle at Gormaz a pale rectangle on its own ridge, the motorway a faint hum on the horizon that reminds you the twenty-first century is still there, just politely muted.

The castle is eight kilometres away by lane, slightly less if you cut across the fields and don’t mind the guard dog at the experimental farm. Built by the Caliph of Córdoba in the tenth century, it is one of the largest fortified enclosures in Europe, yet on a weekday in March you may share the ramparts only with a pair of German cyclists and the custodian who stamps your credencial with a date that will smudge if you don’t let the ink dry. Entry is free; opening times 10:00-14:00, 16:00-18:00, closed Monday. From the southwest tower the view stretches back to Quintanas, its roofs the colour of toast against the green-and-cream patchwork of crops.

Back in the village night arrives quickly once the sun drops behind the pine ridge. Streetlights, all six of them, switch off at midnight to save the council €37 a month. On clear evenings the Milky Way appears with a clarity you last saw on a school geography trip; shooting stars are so common that wishes start to feel extravagant. The only sound is the occasional clank of a sheep bell or the diesel growl of the Madrid courier van that passes through at 02:15, driver making a three-point turn outside the church before continuing to Soria.

Accommodation is limited. There are four rooms above the bar: clean, heated by electric radiator, €35 including breakfast of coffee, juice from a carton, and a tortilla slice the size of a coaster. Two rural cottages have been restored with beamed ceilings and Wi-Fi that works if the wind is in the right quadrant; they sleep four from €70 mid-week, rising to €95 at Easter. Book ahead if your dates coincide with the local mushroom festival in October, when foragers from Valencia arrive with knives and opinions.

Getting here without walking requires a car. From Madrid the A-1 runs north to Aranda de Duero, then the CL-117 slices across the plateau through villages whose populations you can count on two hands. Petrol is available at El Burgo de Osma, seventeen kilometres west; miss that exit and the next pump is forty-two kilometres away in Soria. Buses from Soria reach Gormaz on Tuesdays and Fridays at 15:30; after that you thumb a lift or walk the last eight kilometres. In winter the road is cleared after snow, but not urgently—if the forecast threatens, carry blankets and a shovel like the locals do.

The village will not change your life, but it may realign your sense of scale. A morning spent watching cloud shadows drift across the fields, coffee cooling in your hand as the church bell counts the hour, is enough to remind you why the Spanish have a word for the space between what you need and what you chase. Come with a full tank, a half-full diary, and the expectation that nothing much will happen. By checkout you may find that nothing already happened, quietly, at 937 metres, while you were looking the other way.