Albalá

Morning at 600 metres

The church bell strikes eight and the sound carries clear across the valley. From the plaza, you can see fifty kilometres on a good day—brown fields, silver olive groves, and the occasional white dot of another village stitched to the ridge. Albala sits at 600 m above sea level, high enough that the air feels thinner than in Cáceres, 45 minutes away by car, and cool enough that even in July you might want a jumper before the sun clears the sierra.

Altitude matters here. The Sierra de Montánchez rises gently from the west, so clouds often stall on the summit and drop their cargo before reaching the village. Locals say that when the television weather map shows "green" for the province, Albala still gets a shower. The difference is only a few hundred metres, but it shapes the working day: farmers head out at dawn to beat the midday oven, while walkers save their appetite for the six-o’clock lull when shadows stretch across the dehesa.

Stone, mud and living cork

There is no postcard façade, no single Instagram angle. Instead, the village gives you a lesson in how granite and cork oak can outlast every fashion. Parish church aside—its tower rebuilt in 1953 after lightning split the original—most buildings are two-storey houses of rough stone, whitewash refreshed whenever a wedding or funeral looms. Doorways sit shoulder-high to a tall man; centuries ago people were shorter, and heat conservation mattered more than grandeur.

Wander downhill from the plaza and the lanes turn to packed earth. Here the walls swap stone for tapia: limestone, straw and river gravel rammed into wooden frames, then left to harden like concrete. It costs nothing but labour, and when the surface weathers it simply gets another coat of slurry the colour of digestive biscuits. The technique is dying out—new builds use cement blocks—but a council scheme now pays retired masons to repair sections on public land, so the craft survives as maintenance rather than new-build.

Cork oaks dominate the outer streets. Their trunks look sun-burned where the outer bark has been stripped, a lattice of rusty rectangles that will pale to honey before the next harvest, nine years hence. One tree yields enough cork for 3,000 wine stoppers; Albala’s communal woods hold 200,000 trees. Do the maths and you realise the village owns a multimillion-euro resource, yet the forest feels empty, the only sound a distant chainsaw thinning sweet chestnut for charcoal.

A circular that never quite closes

The obvious walk starts at the petrol station—singular, pumps switched off after 9 p.m.—and follows the GR-134 waymarks south-east. Yellow-and-white stripes lead you past allotments where every lettuce has its own roof tile to keep off the frost, then into open dehesa. The path is a farm track: rutted, stony, occasionally blocked by a grid of railway lines intended to keep cattle off the tarmac. After 4 km you reach a col with an iron cross welded from agricultural scrap; the return loop forks left, but the signpost has been missing since Storm Filomena. GPS helps, yet the simplest insurance is to download the free map from the regional website before leaving the UK; roaming is patchy once the valley bends.

Spring brings the best dividends. By late March the ground is a paint-box of yellow Spanish broom and mauve rosemary; nightingales rehearse along the seasonal streams, and storks thermalling overhead throw shadows the size of dinner tables. Autumn shifts the palette to copper, but add possible rain. A morning sprinkle is harmless; an overnight soaker turns clay to grease and you will slide even in proper boots. If the sky looks moody, swap the circular for an out-and-back along the surfaced lane—safer, and the verges hold the same mushrooms locals hunt for the pot.

What arrives on a lorry and leaves in a suitcase

There is no Saturday market. Instead, a white van from the provincial capital pulls up outside the pharmacy on the first Tuesday of each month and unfolds into a travelling fishmonger’s. Hake, monkfish and boiled langoustines sit on plastic trays over ice; queues form early and evaporate by eleven. For everyday protein most households still keep a chest freezer stocked from the autumn matanza: one pig, one weekend, enough chorizo, morcilla and jamón to last until the following Christmas. Visitors can’t legally buy raw meat from a neighbour, but the village shop will slice you caña de lomo (loin cured with pimentón) for €12 a kilo—half the price of the airport deli.

Cheese is another matter. A goat dairy on the road to Montánchez opens weekday mornings. Enter through the stable door, breathe in the acid-sweet smell of whey, and ask for torta de Albala, a soft disc wrapped in chestnut leaves. Made with vegetable rennet, it turns creamy within ten days; after three weeks it smells like a rugby sock but tastes of mushrooms and burnt butter. Buy the youngest version if you’re travelling onwards—customs allow up to 2 kg for personal use, but the cheese must be sealed and refrigerated.

When fiestas trump timetables

August 15 brings the Fiesta de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción. The council hires a cover band who play eighties rock until 5 a.m.; residents counter by fitting steel shutters to their ground-floor windows. Sleep is theoretical, but the upside is free entry to the peña tents where local associations serve caldereta (mutton stew) at cost price. A plate the size of a satellite dish costs €6; bread and a plastic cup of local pitarra wine are included. Tourist numbers swell to maybe 300—tiny by Spanish standards, yet enough to fill the only bar with terrace tables. If you need quiet, book a room on the upper lane, away from the plaza, or visit in June when nothing happens at all.

January 17 is San Antón. The priest sprinkles holy water over dogs, tractors and one bored horse; afterwards, the council lays on free chocolate con churros. British visitors sometimes expect a coffee-and-pastry moment; instead you get a paper cup of drinking-chocolate thick enough to stand a spoon in. Treat it as lunch.

Getting there, staying over, heading home

No train reaches this corner of Extremadura. From the UK, fly to Madrid, collect a hire car and head west on the A-5 for 220 km; after Navalmoral take the EX-118 for 25 km of curves. Petrol is cheaper at the motorway service area—fill up before you leave the trunk road. Driving time is two and a half hours, but add another thirty minutes if you arrive after dark; the final stretch is unlit and wild boar regard the tarmac as theirs.

Accommodation is limited. The village has one guest-house, four rooms above a restaurant that shuts on Tuesdays. Expect tiled floors, wi-fi that flickers when the microwave is on, and a breakfast of toast, olive oil and tomato purée for €4.50. Alternative: stay in Montánchez, 12 km away, where a 16th-century convent turned four-star hotel offers rooftop views and a pool, though you will pay €110 rather than €45.

Leave time for the return journey. The region lives on staggered hours; lunch starts at 2 p.m., checkout at noon, and the Monday-to-Friday baker closes when the bread sells out—sometimes eleven, sometimes earlier. Factor in a coffee delay while the bar owner finishes her own errands and you realise Albala runs on courtesy, not the clock. Accept that, and the sierra will give you the one thing no schedule delivers: a morning when the only decision is whether to walk to the next ridge or simply sit and watch the cork grow.