Cabezabellosa

At 836 metres, Cabezabellosa sits high enough that the first climb from the car park feels like someone's adjusted the oxygen. The village proper begins where the asphalt ends in a scruffy turning circle, and within three minutes' walk the houses thin out into oak scrub and the view drops away towards the Gabriel y Galán reservoir, a silver blade between brown ridges.

This is northern Cáceres, the part of Extremadura that nobody quite reaches on the dash between Madrid and Seville. The population—343 at last count—fits comfortably into a single parish church on Sunday, and the streets have the unhurried rhythm of places where the loudest sound is usually a dog relocating itself into shade. Stone walls are held together with a mortar the colour of weathered terracotta; slate roofs pitch steeply to shrug off winter snow that rarely comes but gets planned for anyway.

Up Among the Oaks

The village is less a destination than a balcony. Paths leave almost from the doorways, picking their way between holm oaks and strawberry trees towards old drovers' trails that once funnelled merino sheep north to León. Thirty minutes on foot and the hamlet is reduced to roof tiles glinting among the treetops; an hour and you are alone with buzzards and the distant hum of the reservoir's pumping station. Spring brings a lime-green haze of new oak leaves and the risk of sudden cloudbursts; autumn shifts the palette to copper and the underfoot crunch of acorns. Both seasons smell of damp earth and woodsmoke, and both deliver the kind of light that makes even phone-camera shots look deliberate.

Mushroom hunters appear after the first October rains, wicker baskets slung over shoulders, eyes scanning for the ochre caps of níscalos. They follow an unwritten etiquette: pick only what you recognise, leave the blade of your knife clean, and never discuss coordinates. Outsiders are welcome to tag along provided they bring curiosity and stout boots; GPS signal fades quickly once the gullies deepen.

Slate, Stone and the Smell of Sausage

Back in the lanes, houses are built to the same template: two-storey masonry ground floors, slate upperworks, balconies barely wide enough for a geranium pot yet perfect for hanging hams. Many still have the original grain stores—tiny timber granaries perched on mushroom-shaped stone stilts to keep rats at bay. Restoration has been piecemeal, so a freshly repainted façade often leans against a neighbour whose render fell off sometime during the last recession. The effect is honest rather than quaint, a working catalogue of what happens when building budgets arrive in instalments.

Lunch aromas leak from half-open doors: pimentón-heavy sofrito for chickpea stew, or the sweet-sour note of quince paste reducing on the back burner. There is no restaurant strip; instead you eat where someone has decided to open their front room for the day. Calle Parras 12 does migas—fried breadcrumbs strewn with grapes and shards of chorizo—served on plates warm from the hearth. Expect to pay eight euros for a portion that would sink a lesser appetite, and bring cash because the card machine is "mañana". If the door is shut, knock anyway; the owner is probably just relocating the washing from the dining table.

Winter Fog, Summer Furnace

Altitude cuts both ways. From November to March the village can sit inside a milk-thick fog while the valley below basks in sunshine, a temperature inversion that turns street lamps into pale moons at midday. Nights drop to zero even in April; that extra fleece you nearly left in the hire car will earn its carry-on weight. Conversely, July and August send thermometers to 35 °C by early afternoon, and shade is rationed. The siesta then is non-negotiable: metal shutters clatter down at two, reopening only when the sun has slipped behind the ridge and the church bell tolls seven. Plan walks for dawn or the long amber gloaming; midday is for watching the village football match on the dusty pitch outside the cemetery, where the commentary comes from passing tractors.

Getting Up, Getting Out

The final six kilometres from the CC-204 are a coil of second-gear bends; count on twenty-five minutes if you meet no timber lorry, forty if you do. A full-size coach will not fit, which partly explains why the tour buses stop elsewhere. Petrol stations are scarce—fill up in Plasencia before turning north. There is no taxi rank; the lady who runs the grocery shop will, if asked nicely, phone her nephew who owns the only hybrid in the parish. Fares are negotiable and usually involve a bag of local oranges thrown in.

Accommodation is limited to a handful of cottages and the 16th-century Casa Palacio Carvajal, its stone staircase worn into shallow dips by four centuries of boots. The house keeps an eco-rating of three green leaves, heats water with solar panels, and offers birdwatching walks during which you are likely to see hoopoes flashing their punk-rock crests and, if the wind is right, a pair of Bonelli's eagles above the crags. Rooms start at €90 including breakfast—expect thick toast dripped with honey from hives tucked into the surrounding holm oak.

The Clock That Runs Slow

Stay longer than a night and you will notice the village clock loses three minutes every hour; nobody winds it with urgency because the day is already shaped by daylight and livestock. Time here is collateral, something to be spent walking to the spring for water rather than saved. That is the real transaction on offer: altitude for attitude, metres above sea level for distance from the news cycle. Cabezabellosa will not dazzle with monuments, but it will loan you a quieter heartbeat and views that stretch halfway to Salamanca. Return the favour by bringing back your rubbish and not feeding the mastiff that guards the olive press; he has perfected the art of looking hungry.

Come spring or autumn, pack layers, sturdy shoes and a sense of chronological elasticity. Arrive expecting grand sights and you will leave within an hour. Arrive ready to walk until the only sound is your own breathing echoing off granite, and the village will keep you for days, doling out its reservoir vistas in changing light, each one fractionally different from the last.