La Colilla

The church bell strikes noon and the only reply is a tractor grinding into life somewhere beyond the stone houses. At 1,130 metres above sea level, La Colilla sits high enough for the air to carry sound differently—sharper, emptier—so the diesel engine seems to echo across the whole Amblés valley. This is the village’s daily soundtrack: one bell, one tractor, occasionally a dog. Madrid lies ninety minutes east, yet the capital’s roar might as well be on another planet.

Most motorists flash past on the N-502 that links Ávila with the Gredos massif, registering little more than a roadside bar and a clutch of granite roofs. They stop only when hunger overrides momentum, pull into the gravel forecourt of Venta de la Colilla, eat quickly, leave. Stay longer and the place begins to calibrate your sense of scale. The population—366 on the last official count—feels generous once you’ve walked every street twice. A slow circuit takes twenty minutes, including the pause to read the stone plaque honouring local boys who fought in Cuba in 1898.

What passes for a centre

There isn’t one. The village spreads in a thin scatter along a ridge; houses face south to catch winter sun, backs turned to the wind that scours the plateau. Granite walls are the colour of week-old snow, timber doors painted the dark green you see on farm machinery. The only public building of any size is the parish church, its squat tower visible from half a kilometre away across stubbled fields. Step inside and the temperature drops ten degrees; the nave smells of candle wax and the damp plaster that comes with altitude. No guides, no donation box, just a notice board advertising next month’s mass schedule and a phone number for the key-keeper who lives three doors down.

Beyond the church the lanes narrow to footpaths that dissolve into pasture. Dry-stone walls divide holdings just large enough for a few cattle or a kitchen garden still planted with potatoes and beans. In early May the fields glow with crimson poppies; by late June the colour has burnt off and everything turns the pale gold of biscuit. Walk east for fifteen minutes and you reach the pinar, a plantation of Scots pine planted during the 1940s to stop erosion. The forest floor is soft with needles; wild boar rootle among the roots, leaving prints the size of a child’s hand. Look up and you might see an imperial eagle riding the thermals that rise from the valley—though patience improves the odds more than any bird book.

Eating like you mean it

Venta de la Colilla opens at ten for coffee and doesn’t bother with dinner: kitchens shut at four-thirty sharp, pans scrubbed before the chef’s afternoon kip. The menu is written on a whiteboard and rarely changes: judiones de La Granja, butter beans the length of a thumb, simmered with pancetta until the broth turns cloudy; chuletón de Ávila, a T-bone cut thicker than the Daily Telegraph and served on a wooden board still hissing from the grill; arroz con leche, cold rice pudding thick enough to hold the spoon vertical. Portions are built for men who have spent the morning shifting hay bales. Order half-raciones unless you enjoy defeat. House wine arrives in a glass tumbler and costs €1.80—cheaper than the bottled water.

Ring ahead at weekends. The place seats forty, fills with extended families from Ávila who treat Sunday lunch like a semi-religious observance. Service is friendly but stretched; expect to wait while the single waiter negotiates between kitchen and terrace, balancing plates of roast lamb and bowls of rustic chips. If you need vegetarian fare, the options are salad or chips, sometimes both.

Walking without waymarks

La Colilla is a starter rather than the main walking course. Serious Gredos trails begin forty-five minutes west at Plataforma, but you can still stretch your legs here without seeing another boot. The most straightforward route heads south along the Camino de la Dehesa, a dirt track that doubles as the cattle-droving road. After three kilometres the path dips into a hollow where an abandoned stone hut leans like a drunk; inside, the walls are black with decades of shepherd fires. Continue another kilometre and the track peters out on a rise giving views back across the valley: hamlets the size of postage stamps, the N-502 a grey thread, the sierra beyond already bruised with evening shadow.

Carry OSM on your phone; signposting is erratic and farmers sometimes move gates. In winter the same track turns to red clay that clogs soles; if snow has fallen, park on the verge rather than risk sliding into the ditch like last year’s Renault driven by a Madrid weekender. Summer brings a different hazard: sun that feels closer than it should at this height. Start early, take more water than you think necessary, and remember the bar is shut by the time you return.

Seasons, silence and the petrol question

April and May are the kindest months. Mornings can start at frost point yet by eleven you’re in shirtsleeves; wild thyme scents the air and the night sky stays cold enough to freeze the smell of manure. September repeats the trick with added mushrooms: níscalos in the pine woods, boletus under the oaks, though pick only if you can tell the difference between edible and merely interesting. Local regulations limit each person to two kilos and require a regional permit—buy one online beforehand or risk a bored Guardia Civil issuing an on-the-spot fine.

Winter is stark, beautiful and inconvenient. The N-502 is kept clear as far as the village, but side roads turn to ice rinks. Daytime highs hover around five degrees; nights drop to minus eight. Stone houses were built for this—walls a metre thick, windows the size of shoeboxes—yet most visitors retreat to Ávila for heated floors and room service. Summer, conversely, brings day-trippers escaping the furnace of the Meseta. By midday the terrace at Venta is loud with motorbikes and children demanding Coca-Cola. The village absorbs them, just, but the silence that makes La Colilla special is temporarily drowned.

Fuel up before you arrive. The nearest petrol sits twenty kilometres east in Ávila or twenty-five west in Piedrahíta; running the gauge low is a rookie error on a road where traffic is thin and mobile reception thinner. The same advice applies to cash: the bar takes cards on a good day, but the machine fails when the wind blows from the north. Bring euros, preferably small ones, and don’t expect an ATM.

When to press on

La Colilla works as a pause rather than a destination. Arrive mid-morning, walk the camino, eat beans, drink two glasses of wine, leave by four. Stay overnight and you’ll discover the village has no hotel, no guesthouse, not even a room above the bar. The closest beds lie back in Ávila’s medieval walls or forward in Piedrahíta’s converted manor, both twenty minutes by car. That limitation is also the village’s saving grace: no boutique scented candles, no yoga retreats, nobody selling dream-catchers made from recycled tractor parts. Just granite, pine, cattle and a bell that still tells the time whether anyone listens or not.