Orellana de la Sierra

The Village That Starts After the Tarmac Ends

The road signs give up two kilometres before you arrive. Satellite navigation switches to a squiggly grey line, the tarmac narrows, and suddenly the only thing ahead is a ridge of holm oaks glowing silver in the midday heat. At 403 metres above sea level, Orellana de la Sierra appears almost apologetically: a scatter of white cubes clinging to a saddle between gentle sierras, population 250 on a busy Sunday.

This is La Siberia Extremeña, the empty triangle of Extremadura that Spaniards themselves struggle to place. From the village edge you look east over miles of dehesa – the cork-and-holm oak pasture that looks wild but has been husbanded since the Middle Ages – and west towards the Orellana reservoir, a slab of turquoise water that doesn't quite reach the houses. The altitude is just high enough to shave three degrees off the valley floor, which matters when summer nudges 40 °C and the only shade is the church wall or the inside of a bar.

Walking Tracks, Not Walking Trails

There are no ticket booths, colour-coded arrows or interpretation boards. What you get is a lattice of farm tracks originally cut for goats and tractors, now pressed into service for hikers who don't mind improvising. The most useful leaflet in the ayuntamiento shows three routes: a 45-minute loop to the Cerro de la Horca (good at sunrise), a two-hour traverse to the abandoned hamlet of Valdehornos, and a full-day haul along the GR-134 that eventually drops to the Guadiana river. None are way-marked beyond the occasional concrete post, so download the GPX files while you still have 4G.

Spring brings the best payoff: meadows of pink cistus and yellow cytinus under the oaks, bee-eaters overhead, and the chance of spotting both imperial eagle and black vulture on the same thermals. Autumn swaps wildflowers for mushrooms; locals head out at dawn with wicker baskets and a mental map of where the níscalos appeared last year. If you tag along, remember the rule: anything you can't name with absolute certainty stays in the ground.

Winter is crisp, often wind-sharp, but the reward is silence so complete you can hear your own pulse. Snow is rare; frost isn't. Bring a fleece for the evenings and expect wood-smoke at every chimney – most houses still heat with oak logs trucked in from the higher sierras.

A Menu That Follows the Pig

The only proper restaurant, Mesón La Dehesa, opens when the owner feels like it. Call ahead (+34 924 563 012) or turn up and risk a closed door; if it's locked, the workaround is the bar attached to the village shop, where Conchi will fry you eggs with morcilla and serve them on a plastic terrace overlooking nothing in particular. Prices are stubbornly low: a plate of migas – breadcrumbs fried with garlic, paprika and tiny chunks of pork – costs €4.50, and the house wine arrives in a reused Coke bottle.

Game appears on menus only when someone has shot it. Expect wild-boar stew in November, partridge in season, and year-round portions of cordero that taste of thyme and rosemary from the surrounding scrub. Vegetarians get tortilla, salad, and the best tomatoes they'll ever eat; vegans should self-cater. The nearest supermarket is a 25-minute drive in Don Benito, so stock up before the final climb.

What Passes for a Festival

The fiesta calendar is short and honestly provincial. On the night of 23 June, San Juan, teenagers drag old sofas onto the plaza and build a bonfire from grape prunings; someone produces a sound system, someone else brings beer, and the village dances until the embers fade. Fifteen days later the Virgen del Carmen procession follows a brass band down the main street and straight out into the dehesa, stopping at a field altar for mass under the trees. Visitors are welcome, but there are no printed programmes, no souvenir stalls, and nobody explaining what's going on. Watch, clap when everyone else does, and accept the plastic cup of warm manzanilla that gets pressed into your hand.

August 15 brings the biggest influx: emigrants who left for Madrid or Barcelona in the 1960s return with grandchildren and hire the municipal pool for a foam party. Accommodation fills up for exactly four nights; if you haven't booked a cottage by May you'll be sleeping in Mérida, 75 minutes away.

The Reservoir Reality Check

The Embalse de Orellana is visible from the upper lanes, but reaching the water involves a ten-minute drive on a stony track that Brits will recognise as the kind of road car-hire companies exclude from cover. At the bottom you find a thin crescent of coarse sand, a summer-only chiringuito called El Burgo, and kayaks for rent via WhatsApp (+34 657 221 944). The shoreline is perfect for picnics, less perfect for shade – bring a parasol or fry. Mobile signal dies halfway down the hill, so download offline maps before you leave the village.

Bird-watchers time their visit for March-May or September-November: white storks on the pylons, hoopoes on the grass, and the odd osprey circling above the black bass. Anglers need a regional licence (€8 day permit, buy online) and should expect to catch nothing; the reservoir's reputation exceeds its generosity.

The Honest Verdict

Orellana de la Sierra will not keep adrenaline junkies busy, nor does it trade in postcard perfection. The church façade is plain, the shops shut all afternoon, and English is spoken only at the kayak hut once you've managed to WhatsApp them. What it offers instead is altitude-induced coolness, night skies still genuinely dark, and a pace that makes the Cotswolds feel frantic. Come for two quiet days en route somewhere else, bring a car, a phrasebook and walking boots. If you leave refreshed rather than raving, the village has done its job.