Hoyos De Miguel Munoz

The ridge appears before the village does. One moment the A-941 is winding through wheat fields outside El Barco de Ávila; the next, granite peaks rear up like a wall and the road starts to climb. At 1,100 metres, Hoyos de Miguel Muñoz sits where the Spanish mesa gives way to the Sierra de Gredos, and the temperature drops five degrees before you’ve even found a parking spot.

There isn’t much of one. A sloping patch of gravel beside the church doubles as the main square, and on weekdays it’s shared by delivery vans, the odd hunting dog and two elderly men who seem to treat bench-sitting as a part-time job. The village is small—five hundred souls, give or take—and the architecture is stubbornly practical: stone houses with timber gates, roofs pitched to shrug off winter snow, walls the colour of the earth they stand on. No souvenir shops, no boutique hotels carved from convents. Just houses, a church and views so wide you can watch weather systems advance across the plain you’ve just left.

Walking into the Wind

Most visitors come for the trails that thread south toward the Circo de Gredos. The PR-AV 54 starts opposite the cemetery—look for the white-and-yellow blaze on a telegraph pole—and climbs gently through broom and heather to the abandoned hamlets of La Lagunilla and El Parral. From there you can link to the Cañada Chica, a drove road that once funnelled merino sheep to winter pastures. Even in May the wind is sharp; by October the broom has seeded and the slopes smell faintly of curry. Allow four hours for the circuit, and carry an extra layer; clouds form on the ridge faster than you can say “Atlantic front”.

If that sounds too gentle, the GR-10 long-distance path passes 3 km east of the village. A morning taxi drop at Plataforma de Gredos gives a high-level traverse back to Hoyos, skirting the Laguna Grande and dropping 900 metres in 16 km. The National Park office in Navarredonda de Gredos issues permits in summer and will insist on micro-spikes if snow patches remain—ignore them at your peril, the granite slabs turn lethal when wet.

What Pass for Services

Hoyos itself has neither bar nor shop. The last place to buy supplies is a Spar in El Barco de Ávila, 22 km down the mountain. Arrive stocked like a polar expedition: fresh milk is a 45-minute round trip. Mobile reception is patchy—Vodafone disappears entirely on the north side of the church—and the lone cash machine was removed in 2019 after someone drove into it. Bring euros.

What the village does have is La Mira, a three-star hotel that looks like a 1970s council block and behaves like a country-house retreat. Eighteen rooms, all south-facing, all with balconies that frame the ridge so perfectly it feels stage-managed. Dinner is a set three-course affair: judiones de El Barco (butter-bean stew mild enough for Coventry palates), chuletón al estilo de Ávila (a beef chop the size of a steering wheel), and a honey-and-cheese plate that makes you wonder why we ever bother with pudding. Vegetarians get roasted piquillo peppers and a lecture on the virtues of local sheep’s milk. House red is from nearby Cebreros; at €14 it costs less than the taxi from the airport.

Seasons and Silence

Spring arrives late. Almond blossom appears in April, a full month after Madrid, and night frosts can linger until May. The compensation is colour: green pastures, yellow broom, white peaks sharp against blue sky. Spanish school groups descend at weekends, filling the trails with teenagers comparing step counts. Book rural houses early—there are only six, and the British parties who discovered Hoyos during lockdown now re-book the same weeks every year.

Summer is hot in the sun, cold in the shade. Daytime temperatures reach 28 °C, but the minute the sun dips behind the ridge you’ll be grateful for that fleece. August fiestas involve a portable bar in the square, a brass band that knows three songs, and a paella cooked in a pan two metres wide. Visitors are expected to contribute to the wine fund; drop a tenner in the bucket and you’ll be treated like a cousin.

Autumn is the sweet spot. Days shorten, the broom turns bronze and the first snow dusts the ridge like icing sugar. Spanish walkers thin out after 12 October (national holiday), leaving trails to German retirees and the odd British birdwatcher hoping for a griffon vulture. Winter proper begins in December; the AV-941 is salted but not invincible. Chains are compulsory after heavy snow—car-hire companies charge €60 for the set and look offended when you ask.

Day-Trips for the Restless

If the ridge starts to feel claustrophobic, the medieval walls of Ávila lie 75 minutes north by car. Go early: the cathedral opens at 10 a.m. and the audio guide lasts an hour, just long enough for the first coach party to block the nave. Closer, the Roman bridge at El Barco de Ávila is pretty in a ruined sort of way, and the butter-bean museum (yes, really) explains why the judión has Protected Geographical Status. Twenty minutes east, the village of Navarredonda has a Saturday market where you can buy overpriced cheese and listen to stallholders switch from Castilian to thick, tobacco-stained Spanish mid-sentence.

Back in Hoyos, evening entertainment consists of sitting on your balcony while the ridge fades from gold to grey to black. The silence is so complete you can hear your own blood. Some people find that unnerving; others cancel their return taxi and ask La Mira for another three nights. The hotel staff—locals whose families have lived in these valleys for centuries—just smile and fetch another bottle of Cebreros. They already know the mountains are addictive; they’ve been here all along.