Savallà del Comtat

The church bell strikes seven and the only other sound is a tractor coughing to life three streets away. At 825 m above sea level, the air is thin enough to make morning coffee taste sharper, and the view from the bench outside the single bar is a chessboard of cereal fields fading into oak scrub. This is Savallà del Comtat, a hill-top scrap of stone houses and winding lanes that has somehow dodged the twenty-first century’s habit of turning every pretty village into a weekend shopping mall.

Seventy-odd residents, two goats and a colony of swifts: that is the census that matters. The village sits on the north-west rim of Conca de Barberà, forty minutes’ drive from the A-2 motorway and light-years away from the Costa Dorada traffic jams. Most British visitors barrel straight from Barcelona airport to the Pyrenees without realising they could have broken the journey here, exchanged the AP-7 drone for church-bell silence and still reached the ski slopes of Port Ainé by suppertime.

Stone, sky and the smell of wet earth

A five-minute stroll is enough to map the place. Carrer Major climbs from the old washing trough, passes the bakery that opens twice a week (Thursday and Saturday if Mercè feels like it), and ends at the ruined castle. The path is cobbled, slippery with moss after rain, and bordered by houses built from honey-coloured limestone quarried on site. Look up and you will see boot scrapers set into walls, iron rings for tethering mules and 1838 carved beneath a lintel – the year the vines failed and half the village emigrated to Cuba.

The castle itself is a shell. No ticket booth, no gift shop, just a steep final scramble to a grassy platform where the 360-degree payoff stretches from the snow-dusted Pyrenees to the jagged silhouette of Montserrat. Sunset here is pure HBO: amber light sliding across vineyards, the distant blink of a plane descending into Barcelona and, if the wind is right, the clank of goat bells rising from the valley like off-stage sound effects.

Down in the lanes the church of Sant Andreu keeps medieval bones under later plaster. The door is usually locked – the key hangs behind the bar, attached to a giant wooden spoon – but inside is cool, plain and mercifully free of audio guides. The only colour comes from a faded banner embroidered in 1922 by local women to celebrate the inauguration of the village water supply. It is still carried through the streets every November during the fiesta major, a one-day affair that doubles the population as descendants return from Tarragona, Madrid and, increasingly, Birmingham.

Walking without way-markers

Savallà’s real monument is the web of farm tracks radiating into the grain belt. None are signed for tourists, which is either liberating or maddening depending on your appetite for getting lost. A sensible loop heads south-east on the camí vell de Vilanova, drops through almond terraces and re-enters the village after 6 km via the cemetery gate. Spring brings poppies and the smell of fennel; autumn turns the vines copper and the locals out with baskets hunting rovellons, the peppery wild mushrooms that taste of chestnuts.

Ambitious walkers can link into the 40 km Corb Valley circuit that finishes in neighbouring Llorac, but download the GPX before you set off – paint flashes are sporadic and the only person likely to give directions is on a tractor with headphones. Mobile signal is patchy: EE fares best near the church, Vodafone vanishes entirely and Three users should treat the outing as a digital detox.

Calories and carbohydrates

There is no restaurant, no tapas trail, no Sunday craft market. The single bar, Ca la Mercè, serves coffee until 11, beer until the barrel runs out and, on Friday evening, a plate of botifarra sausage with white beans for anyone who books ahead. Most visitors self-cater. The nearest supermarket is in Santa Coloma de Queralt, twelve kilometres of corkscrew road away, so wise travellers stop in Montblanc on the drive up and load the boot with vegetables, wine and the square Catalan coca bread that keeps for days.

What the village lacks in choice it repays in ingredients. Almonds from the cooperative in neighbouring Pira cost half the price of supermarket packs and arrive still dusty from the orchard. Local olive oil, pressed in Barberà de la Conca, is grassy enough to make British peppery Tuscan bottles taste tame. The valley’s flagship grape is parellada, usually destined for Cava but increasingly bottled as a still white that tastes of green apples and mountain streams. Bring a couple of empties to Celler Joan Serra in Montblanc and they will fill them from the stainless-steel tank for €3 a litre – perfect picnic booze that will not stain your teeth before the ski selfies.

Beds, dogs and the no-taxi problem

Accommodation is limited to four rural lets, all dog-friendly, all with wood-burning stoves and infinity views. Naturaki’s Casa del Castell sleeps eight round a medieval wall; smaller pairs book Ca la Pau, a former bakery whose patio catches the morning sun over the cereal plateau. Pool season runs Easter to October – outside those dates the water turns emerald and the owners shrug: “This is altitude, what do you expect?” Prices hover round £120 a night for the whole house in low season, jumping to £220 when the swallows return.

The catch is transport. There is no petrol station, no taxi rank, no Uber. Pre-book a cab from Santa Coloma if you must, but the meter starts running the moment the driver leaves the town rank, so a 25-minute ride can cost €40. Car hire is essential; bring chains between December and March because the TV-7001 is the last road the gritters remember. On weekdays a school bus passes through at dawn and dusk – the only public transport on offer, and drivers refuse tourists with suitcases.

When to come – and when to stay away

April and May deliver daytime highs of 18 °C, wild orchids along the tracks and the smell of freshly cut alfalfa drifting through open windows. September repeats the trick with added grape-harvest bustle and golden light that flatters every photograph. Mid-summer is surprisingly bearable – altitude knocks the edge off the heat – but August weekends now attract day-trippers from Tarragona who park camper-vans by the castle and crank up portable speakers. If you want the silence back, walk ten minutes out of the village at dusk; the locals do and the goats certainly do.

Winter is a gamble. Blue-sky days hit 10 °C and the air is so clear you can count wind turbines on the Pyrenean ridge 80 km away. Then the tramuntana wind arrives, temperature drops to –3 °C and the power fails because an oak has landed on the line. Cottages have back-up heaters, but bring slippers and a sense of humour.

Leaving without souvenirs

There is nothing to buy except what you have already eaten or drunk. No fridge magnets, no artisanal soap, no printed tea towels. The village’s gift is simpler: a reminder that somewhere in Europe the day is still measured by shadows moving across a ploughed field, and that quiet can be a currency worth more than nightlife. Pack that thought in your carry-on and the return queue at Barcelona security feels fractionally less brutal.