Alcollarín

The church bell strikes eleven and the only other sound is a tractor grinding through lower gears somewhere beyond the almond trees. Alcollarín's plaza, barely the size of a tennis court, holds three stone benches, two elderly men in flat caps, and a dog that has appropriated the middle of the roadway for an extended nap. This is Extremadura stripped to its essentials: 270 souls, one parish church, and a landscape that changes colour with the wheat.

A village that fits in your pocket

Most maps barely acknowledge the place. Drivers shoot past the turning on the EX-208, eyes fixed on Trujillo's castle towers 20 minutes eastwards. Those who do swing south find the village clustered on a low ridge, white walls reflecting sunlight hard enough to make you squint. The urban centre—an extravagant term—consists of four streets and a handful of lanes that dead-end into wheat fields. You can walk every metre of it in ten minutes, though the heat will persuade you to take twenty.

The houses follow the Extremaduran formula: whitewashed masonry, Arabic tile roofs, granite corners cut from the local quarry. Many still keep the original layout—arched doorway opening onto a patio where chickens once scratched, stables and storerooms ranged round the back. A couple of facades have been smartened up with Madrid-style grey paint and stainless-steel letterboxes, but most retain the faint stains of rainwater and tractor dust that mark authentic working villages. There is no boutique hotel, no gift shop, no bar with a chalked beer list in Comic Sans. What you see is what the residents live with, minus the laundry they have tactfully pulled from the balconies before the day's heat builds.

Reservoir versus reality

TripAdvisor insists the Embalse de Alcollarín is the local highlight, a concrete dam ten minutes south holding back a shallow lake frequented by shrikes and bee-eaters. British birders treat it as a petrol-station break: park on the ridge, lift binoculars for half an hour, tick off the woodchat shrike, drive on to Monfragüe. They never reach the village itself, which explains why the only English-language review of the area ends at the reservoir gate.

The approach road is a crumbly single track; after heavy rain the final slope turns to ochre slime and sensible drivers abandon the car on the crest. From the top you look across an amphitheatre of dehesa—open oak pasture where black Iberian pigs snuffle for acorns in autumn. The water glints below, but the village remains hidden beyond a fold of land. It is a useful stop for migratory birds and overheated motorists, yet it is not the reason Alcollarín exists. The real focus is the grain belt stretching north towards the ruins of Monroy, a sea of barley that shimmers bronze by late June and rasps in the wind like dry paper.

Food when the stove is lit

Gastronomy here is strictly supply-and-demand. Restaurante Cayo Coco, halfway along the main street, opens when the owner feels like it—usually weekends, sometimes Friday lunch, rarely both. Locals recommend ringing the night before; if nobody answers, assume the charcoal grill is cold. When it does fire up, the menu runs to thick-cut pork presa, salt-crusted lamb ribs, and quince paste made by someone's aunt in Zarza de Granadilla. Prices hover around €12 for a plate big enough to floor a ploughman. Beer arrives in 33-cl bottles yanked from an under-counter fridge; wine is whatever red is open. There is no dessert list—ask and you get a slab of almond tart or nothing at all.

Mid-week hunger requires forward planning. The village shop closed two years ago when the owners retired to Cáceres; the nearest baker is in Santa Cruz de Paniagua, 12 km east. Self-caterers should stock up in Trujillo before turning off the motorway. Vegetarians can survive on tomato toast and local cheese, but they will need a cool box because the summer temperature nudges 38 °C and melts everything softer than Manchejo within minutes.

Calendar dictated by tractors

Visit in April and you meet a patchwork of emerald wheat and blood-red poplars newly leafed. By July the palette has shifted to parched gold; the air smells of warm thyme and diesel. Harvest brings convoys of combines that barely fit the lanes; drivers nod you into the ditch while they squeeze past with combine headers wider than a London bus. August is fiesta time: the Asunción fair pulls home anyone who ever escaped to Madrid or Barcelona. For three nights the plaza hosts a sound system that would embarrass Ministry of Sound, and elderly women in deckchairs guard patches of shadow like nightclub bouncers. If you want sleep, choose another week.

Winter is the quiet season. Mist pools in the hollows, and the temperature can drop to –3 °C at dawn—high enough to nip your fingers, low enough to make the stone houses feel refrigerated. Most visitors stay away, which is why bird-watchers return. Hen harriers quarter the stubble, and great bustards sometimes feed on the fallow plots outside the ring road—an invisible road to everyone except the GPS and the local farmer who counts his sheep there each dawn.

Getting stuck, or choosing to be

Public transport is a memory. The last bus left in 2011 when subsidies dried up. You need wheels, ideally with suspension tough enough for the cattle grid outside the dam. From Madrid's Barajas airport the drive is 2 h 30 min down the A-5, toll-free and usually fast until you meet the final 12 km of regional road where tractors practice their parade crawl. A hire car is essential; petrol stations thin out west of Navalmoral, so fill the tank while you can.

Accommodation is the deal-breaker. Alcollarín itself offers no beds. The nearest foreign-approved base is Finca Flores Amarillas, a rural house run by English-speaking hosts in Almoharín, 20 minutes south. They cater mainly to birding groups who spend daylight hours in Monfragüe and evenings on the terrace with a glass of local tempranillo. Expect donkeys in the neighbouring paddock and Wi-Fi that flickers when the wind blows from the Atlantic.

The honest verdict

Alcollarín will not change your life. It has no castle to climb, no Michelin mention, no artisan gin distilled in a reconverted washhouse. What it offers is a slice of interior Spain still operating on agricultural time, where the loudest weekend noise is the church loudspeaker announcing Sunday mass and the price of diesel. Come if you want to practise rusty Spanish with men who remember farming before EU subsidies, or if you need a cheap place to base yourself between the medieval splendours of Trujillo and the raptor cliffs of Monfragüe. Bring binoculars, a cool bag, and the phone number of the only restaurant. Leave expectations at the reservoir turn-off and you might—might—find the simplicity refreshing. If you need a flat white before 9 a.m., keep driving.