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about La Adrada
Historic town in the Tiétar Valley, dominated by its restored castle and ringed by pine and chestnut forests.
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The evening bus from Madrid drops you at the foot of a granite motte whose crenellations catch the last of the sun. Walk uphill for four minutes—longer if you're dragging a wheeled suitcase over cobbles—and the 14-metre keep of the Castillo de La Adrada looms overhead. At 624 m above sea level this is still the piedmont rather than the high Sierra de Gredos, yet the air is already cooler than on the Meseta and smells of resin and woodsmoke rather than diesel and dust.
A fortress that refuses to crumble
Most Spanish villages of this size make do with a ruined turret and a plaque; La Adrada has a full fourteenth-century castle that was patched up properly in the 1990s and again in 2017. The result is neither Disney-fresh nor romantically crumbling: arrow slits still work, the battlements are walkable, and the small interpretation centre screens a three-minute video that even non-Spanish speakers can survive (ask at the desk and the caretaker will run through the highlights in English while he tears your €3 entry ticket). Climb the tower and the reward is a 270-degree sweep over the Tiétar valley—olive groves below, black-vulture airspace above, and the Gredos wall looking improbably alpine fifty kilometres west. The castle shuts on Mondays and for weddings, so check before you set out; cash only, no card machine, and they won’t store your rucksack.
Downhill, the grid of lanes inside the old walls is medieval enough to confuse Google Maps. Houses are granite below, timber balcony above, with the occasional modern glass box wedged between. The Plaza del Ayuntamiento is less a photogenic square than a working civic centre: elderly men occupy the stone benches in strict rotation, mothers push buggies under the soportales, and the weekend market spreads eight stalls of fruit and knickers across the centre. Sit long enough and someone will point out the church’s Renaissance portal or the stone coat of arms that the 1936 fire somehow left intact.
Climate trickery and weekend invasions
The village sits in a climatic sweet spot: far enough south for fig trees to survive, high enough for chestnuts to prosper. Winters are shorter than in Ávila city and summers less fierce than in the flat lands around Toledo; the result is a landscape that feels closer to Cáceres than to the high plateau. Come in October and the hillsides smell of ripening chestnuts; come in March and the same slopes are loud with running water that has already vanished on the plain.
That benevolent weather explains why the population quintuples in August. Madrileños drive the 110 km south-west on the A-5, turn off at Oropesa, and colonise every hire-cottage within a 15-km radius. The village bakery triples its croissant order, the outdoor pools beside the Arenal river charge €4 for a sun-lounger, and finding a parking space on Avenida de Ávila becomes a contact sport. Book accommodation early—expect a 25% price bump—or visit in late September when the water is still warm and the chestnut trees are beginning to turn.
Walking, climbing, or just watching vultures
La Adrada is a staging post rather than a hiking hub, but three way-marked loops start from the old railway station (now an unmanned information point). The shortest—5 km, 150 m ascent—circles through olive groves to the abandoned chapel of San Blas and back in time for lunch. The 12-km variant climbs into the pinewoods where black vultures nest; you’ll need water and a map because phone coverage evaporates under the canopy. Serious walkers use the village as a cheap bed-and-breakfast stop for the 73-km Gredos section of the GR-10, but that is a five-day haul rather than an afternoon stroll.
Climbers bring racks of nuts rather than bolts: the granite outcrops at Las Cogotas, ten minutes by car towards Sotillo, offer 40-odd routes up to 6c, most of them slabby and beginner-friendly. Mountain-bikers follow the forest tracks that fan out above the reservoir; after rain the red clay sticks to tyres like toffee, so early-morning starts are essential if you don’t fancy pushing.
What lands on the plate
The local menu hasn’t fallen for fusion. Expect judiones del Tiétar—butter beans the size of 50-pence pieces stewed with ham hock—followed by roast kid or beef from Ávila’s blonde cattle. Vegetarians survive on revolcona potatoes (paprika mash topped with fried egg) and pisto manchego, though El Aula Restaurante will swap in goat’s-cheese croquettes if you ask. A set lunch (menú del día) runs €14–16 and includes wine; dinner is heavier and €6–8 more. If the children mutiny, the Korrigan Irish Pub does a passable fish-and-chips and pours Guinness at a chilly 6 °C. The only supermarket, Covirán, shuts for siesta 14:00–17:00; fill the car in Piedralaves if you’re self-catering and arrive after dark.
When to come, how to get here, what can go wrong
Spring and early autumn give you 22 °C afternoons and cool bedrooms without air-con. Easter week is busy but bearable; the Medieval Market (first weekend of August) fills every guest-bed within 30 km—fun if you fancy costumed knights, hellish if you wanted silence. Winter is crisp, often sunny, and occasionally snowy; the castle stays open but some rural tracks ice over.
There is no railway. From Madrid Moncloa, Avanza bus line 122 takes 1 h 45 min and costs €11.75 each way; the last return leaves at 19:15, so day-trippers need to watch the clock. Drivers exit the A-5 at Talavera, follow the CM-510 to Oropesa, then the N-502 south for 20 min. Petrol is 5–7 c cheaper on the motorway than in the village. Street parking is free and safe except for the unsigned dirt patch opposite the castle—locals warn that the grúa (tow-truck) appears within minutes.
Mobile signal indoors is patchy; download offline maps before you leave the Parador in Oropesa. There is no left-luggage office, and the castle gatekeeper will not mind your backpack while you climb the tower. If the afternoon clouds stack up against the sierra, take it as a cue to head for a café: the same weather front that waters the chestnut trees can drench the cobbles in twenty minutes and leave them steaming half an hour later.
La Adrada will never elbow its way onto Spain’s top-ten list. That is precisely why you might pause here: to eat beans cooked the same way for centuries, to watch vultures tilt over a green valley that shouldn’t exist in Castile, and to remember that somewhere between Madrid and the mountains the plateau loosens its grip and begins to breathe.
