Mijares

At 848 m, the thermometer on the pharmacy wall still reads 18 °C in late October while the summit of the Sierra de Gredos, 25 km north, carries the season’s first snow. Mijares sits in this thermal pocket – the Valle del Tiétar – where almond trees blossom three weeks before those in Ávila and fig trees keep their leaves well into December. The village is small (718 souls on the roll, fewer once the evening bus leaves for Madrid) and its stone houses look more towards the valley’s orchards than to the high peaks behind.

The valley that shouldn’t be this mild

Drive the AV-900 from the A-5 and you climb 600 m in 17 km of switchbacks. Pine plantations give way to cherry terraces; the air smells of resin, then suddenly of wet vegetable plots. This is Castile, but not the wind-lashed plateau Brits imagine: rainfall is double that of Madrid and summer afternoons are tempered by the same updraft that carries griffon vultures along the southern face of Gredos. Locals claim the valley once supplied fruit to Franco’s summer palace and still send cherries to El Corte Inglés in May. Whether or not that is true, the proof is in the orchards – rows of grafted cherry, apricot and old-fashioned pear varieties that turn the lower slopes white for ten days each spring.

Walking tracks start at the top of the village where the tarmac thins into a concrete lane. The PR-14 way-markers lead north-east through abandoned allotments, then enter pinar de repoblación planted under Franco. After 40 minutes the path breaks out onto a basalt lip: the whole Tiétar valley opens westwards, the castle at Oropesa just visible on its ridge. Return the same way or continue on a four-hour loop that drops to the river and the old irrigation channel, still flowing fast enough to power a 1950s turbine that lights two street lamps in Mijares on summer nights.

Food at altitude

There is only one bar, Bar Mijares, and it does not open on Monday. When the metal shutter is up, order the chuletón for two (€34, cash only). The beef comes from Avileña cattle aged on the valley’s southern slopes; it is grilled over vine shoots that give a quick, sweet smoke and a crust you rarely achieve on a British barbecue. Vegetarians can ask for judiones – the local white beans – stewed with spinach and sweet paprika instead of the usual partridge. House red from Cebreros is light enough to drink at midday and costs €9 a bottle. If you need breakfast, the bakery opposite sells a serviceable coffee and a palm-shaped pastry for €1.80, but arrive before 10 a.m. – the owner closes once the loaves are gone.

Cheese is made three mornings a week in the dairy behind the church. The goat’s milk is heated in a copper cauldron, curd cut with a blade shaped like a tennis racket, then pressed under roof slates. The result is mild, almost buttery; buy a 250 g wheel for €5 and it will survive the flight home wrapped in a sock.

A place to sleep, or just to pause

Accommodation inside the village amounts to seven rooms. Hospedería Doña Ligia occupies the old primary school above the playground; bedrooms have beams, radiators that work, and views either to the cherry terraces or to the stone bell tower that strikes every half-hour. Doubles from €70 including breakfast (toast, local jam, coffee that is actually hot). The only alternative is three kilometres down the access road at Apartamentos Rurales El Carrascal – timber cabins with kitchens, a pool open June–September, and valley views that make Madrid weekenders forget the weak Wi-Fi. One-bedroom apartment €90 mid-week, €110 at weekends; bring groceries because the nearest shop is back in the village.

Most visitors treat Mijares as a staging post: Madrid in the morning, walk in the afternoon, onward to Cáceres or Salamanca next day. That works, provided you remember the practicalities. Petrol: last station is in Arenas de San Pedro, 25 km away. Cash: no ATM, and the bar will not take cards for amounts under €10. Weather: even in May the wind off the sierra can drop the temperature ten degrees in an hour – pack a fleece whatever the forecast says.

When the valley turns pink and white

Cherry blossom usually peaks the last week of March; the local tourist office (open Tuesday and Thursday, telephone inside the town hall door) will tell you whether the buds are “en previsión” or “en flor”. Photographers arrive at dawn for shots of blossom against snowy Gredos, then leave before the sun is high enough to reveal the plastic irrigation pipes. Stay longer and you will hear the tractors at work by eight, reversing alarms echoing across the terraces like impatient London bin lorries.

Autumn is quieter. Almonds are knocked down with long poles in mid-September; the sound carries through the valley like muffled gunfire. Leaves turn late, often not until the first frost in November, and the sky keeps a hard blue that would make a Cotswold postcard editor weep. This is the best season for serious walking: the high route to the Laguna de la Nava is snow-free and the only company is the occasional shepherd on a Honda mule.

The honest verdict

Mijares will not keep you busy for a week. The church is locked more often than not, the castle ruins are fenced off, and the evening entertainment is a choice between the bar and the bench outside the pharmacy. What the village does offer is a corrective to the idea that interior Spain is all dust and Don Quixote windmills. The air is clean, the steak is good, and the valley delivers a gentler climate than you have any right to expect at this altitude. Stop for a night on the drive south, walk the blossom lanes, buy a cheese, then leave before the bells strike eight and remind you that you are, after all, in the middle of the mountains.