Vistabella del Maestrat

The church bell strikes noon, yet the temperature reads 18°C. At 1,200 metres above the Mediterranean, Vistabella del Maestrat operates on mountain time. While beachgoers roast on the Costa Azahar forty kilometres east, this stone-built village keeps its doors shut against a wind that carries the scent of pine and damp earth.

The Vertical Village

Every street tilts. No two façades align. The builders who laid out Vistabella four centuries ago followed goat tracks, not surveyors' lines, and the result is a settlement that clings to the southern flank of Penyagolosa like barnacles on a ship's keel. Granite cottages, their roofs weighted with heavy slabs of local slate, shoulder against each other for warmth. Windows are small, doorways low – adaptation to winters that can trap residents indoors for days when snow closes the CV-145.

The Plaza Mayor measures barely thirty metres across. One bar, one chemist, one ATM that swallows cards on Fridays. Elderly men play dominoes beneath a pollarded plane tree whose roots have lifted the flagstones into a miniature mountain range. Order a café americano and it arrives in a glass tumbler, Valencian style, accompanied by a paper sachet of sugar that has frozen solid overnight.

Morning light strikes the stone church of la Asunción at an angle that turns the tower honey-gold. Step inside and the temperature drops another five degrees. Baroque giltwork glimmers above a 16th-century font where every local baby has been christened since the Reconquista. Look closer: carvings of pomegranate and olive on the choir stalls, symbols added by Moorish craftsmen who stayed on after the expulsion edicts. Their descendants still farm the terraced strips of land visible from the west door.

Walking into the Sky

Leave the village by the upper gate and the asphalt gives way to a dirt track within three minutes. The PR-CV 100 starts here, a waymarked ribbon that climbs through holm oak and scots pine towards the 1,813-metre summit of Penyagolosa. Spring brings sheets of purple sage and the last of the crocuses; autumn arrives early – the first yellow birch leaves appear in late August. British walking groups compare the terrain to the Upper Peak District, only with better pastries.

The mirador at Coll de la Bassa offers an unfair advantage: on clear days you can see the Balearic ferry inching across the horizon, yet hear only cowbells. Gliders from the aerodrome at Castellón ride the thermals overhead, silent as gulls. Carry on for forty minutes and you reach Mas de la Cot, a ruined farmhouse where swallows nest in the bread oven. No information board, no gift shop, just a stone bench and a spring that tastes of iron. Fill your bottle; the next water is ninety minutes away.

Serious hikers should download the free Carto´explorador app before leaving home – the tourist office Wi-Fi wheezes like an asthmatic donkey. Routes range from the gentle 5-kilometre circuit of the Font de la Rajada to the 19-kilometre traverse that finishes in the neighbouring village of Xodos. Snow can linger on northern slopes until April; in July the same paths glow like barbecue coals. Either way, start early. Mountain rescue is voluntary and the helicopter based at Castellón takes forty minutes to arrive.

What Mountain People Eat

At 13:30 sharp the bar fills with men in dusty boots. They drink claras (lager splashed with lemon) and eat tortilla d´arròs, a dense disc of rice and egg that resembles a Staffordshire oatcake that has been to finishing school. Vegetarians survive on coc de sal i oli, a thin pizza bianca topped with tomato and garlic, while carnivores chase chunks of longaniza sausage around their plates with crusts of bread. Nothing costs more than €9.

The pataca de Vistabella arrives unadorned: small waxy potatoes boiled in their skins, served in a bowl of their own steaming water. Add a thread of local olive oil and a pinch of coarse salt. The flavour is nutty, faintly sweet, the antithesis of supermarket uniformity. These tubers once fed Republican troops hiding in these same mountains; now they accompany Friday's grilled trout.

Sunday lunch is the week's pivot. Families drive up from Castellón and Valencia, clogging the single street with hatchbacks. By 14:15 every table is taken and the kitchen closes to newcomers. Arrive at 13:45 or go hungry – the nearest alternative is seventeen kilometres down a road that corkscrews through pine forest. Dessert is cuajada, sheep's-milk yoghurt set with thistle rennet, drizzled with honey from hives that spend summer among rosemary and lavender. Order coffee afterwards and the waiter will ask "tallat?", the Valencian version of a cortado. Milk arrives scalding hot; it's the only thing in the village that isn't tepid.

When the Sun Goes Down

Evenings begin abruptly. At 20:30 the temperature plummets ten degrees in as many minutes; cardigans appear as if by conjuring. Swallows give way to bats. Streetlights come on – all seven of them – and the Milky Way stretches overhead like spilled sugar. On moonless nights you can read by starlight; on full-moon nights the granite walls glow silver and cats prowl like miniature panthers.

August fiestas upset the equilibrium. Returning emigrants inflate the population to 1,200, a temporary metropolis. Brass bands rehearse at 02:00, fireworks ricochet between the houses, and someone always drives a tractor into the fountain. Book accommodation a year ahead or sleep in your car – even the pension owners rent out their own bedrooms and bunk with cousins.

Winter reverses the numbers. When snow blocks the pass, Vistabella drops to its hard core of 180 souls. The baker arrives on skis; the doctor comes by 4×4 twice a week. If the electricity fails, the village switches to a generator that powers only the bar and the chemist. Bring cash, candles, and a sense of humour proportionate to the altitude.

Getting There – and Away

Valencia airport to Vistabella takes one hour forty-five on a road that narrows with every kilometre. The last petrol station is at Albocàsser; after that the gauge is your enemy. A single bus leaves Castellón at 07:15 and returns at 17:30 – miss it and you spend the night whether you planned to or not. Car hire is essential unless you fancy hitch-hiking with farmers who treat seatbelts as urban affectation.

Leave space in the boot for a bottle of mountain thyme honey and a kilo of those potatoes. They travel better than wine and remind you, when you're back in a British kitchen, that somewhere above the Mediterranean a village still measures time by church bells and weather by the behaviour of swallows.