Monroy

The first thing you notice is the hush. Not the creepy, horror-film sort, but the deliberate, self-confident silence of a place that has never needed to raise its voice. Stand on Monroy’s only proper street at 11 pm and the loudest sound is the cooling tick of a parked Seat Ibiza. Then a cow coughs somewhere beyond the last streetlamp and you realise the village hasn’t disappeared; it’s simply gone to bed on time.

Monroy sits 378 m above sea level on a low granite ridge 28 km east of Cáceres. That modest altitude is enough to lift it clear of the scorching soup that gathers in the Guadiana basin during July and August; nights stay 4–5 °C cooler than in the city, a difference you’ll appreciate if you’ve booked the attic room at Casa Rural La Encina. The air smells of warm resin and dry grass, the signature scent of the dehesa, the open oak savannah that begins where the tarmac ends.

Stone, Sun and the Smell of Jamón

The built bit of Monroy takes six minutes to cross, unless you stop to read the medieval shields carved above doorways. Houses are the colour of old bones, their roofs a jumble of weather-beaten Arabic tiles that clatter like crockery when the wind lifts. There is no centre in the British sense of benches and flowerbeds; instead the village organises itself around the church steps and the single bar, both on the same tilted square. The bar opens at seven for coffee and closes when the last customer leaves, usually well after midnight. Inside, a leg of ibérico ham is nailed to a board; the barman shaves off tissue-thin slices, each one costing less than a London supermarket’s plastic-wrapped apology. Order a caña and you’ll get a free tapa whether you ask or not – local etiquette considers paying for food and drink separately rather eccentric.

The parish church of San Miguel is older than the first written charter, older than the castle ruins that brood on the hilltop above. Its tower acts as the village’s unofficial climbing frame for storks; from March to August the clacking of bills competes with the bell for acoustic dominance. Inside, the altarpiece is gilded with American gold that passed through Trujillo in the 1530s on its way to pay Habsburg debts. The building is usually locked – Father Jesús lives in the next village and carries the key on a green string. Ask at the bar; someone will ring him.

Walking Through a Landscape That Works

Leave the square by the upper lane, past the stone water trough still used by the occasional shepherd, and you are instantly inside the dehesa. The path is wide enough for two mules; it was built for them. Holm oaks have been pollarded here for six centuries, their knuckles swollen into surreal silhouettes. In October and November the same trees drop acorns that taste of sweet chestnut; pigs allowed to graze during the montanera put on two kilos a week and finish as €200 hams. You’ll meet them – small, black, utterly unbothered by humans. Give them space; a curious sow can unzip a rucksack in seconds.

Distances feel elastic. The signposts give times rather than kilometres – “Castillo: 15 min”, “Arroyo Valdelobos: 30 min” – and assume you are wearing espadrilles and carrying a shotgun. The castle track climbs 60 m over fractured granite; trainers suffice in dry weather, but after rain the rock turns into a grater. The fortress itself is privately owned and fenced off since a wall collapsed on a selfie-seeker in 2018. You can circle the exterior, peering through gaps at internal weeds taller than the keep, then perch on a boulder to watch the sun drop behind the Gredos mountains 90 km away. Bring a torch for the descent; street lighting stops at the last house and the stones enjoy tripping foreigners.

Loop back along the cattle-droving road that once connected Trujillo with the Portuguese fairs. The route is marked by granite milestones carved with a cross and the letter “M” – medieval GPS. Allow two hours for the full circuit, longer if you stop to identify birds: booted eagles overhead, hoopoes on the wire, azure-winged magpies bouncing like blue pom-poms through the undergrowth. Spring migrants arrive in waves during the last week of March; the village bakery sells a basic pair of binoculars for €29 because visitors keep leaving theirs on walls.

When to Come and How Not to Stranded

Monroy is not a weekend destination – it’s a Tuesday-to-Thursday sort of place. From June to mid-September the thermometer kisses 38 °C by 14:00; sensible villagers shut the shutters and sleep. You can still walk if you start at dawn, but carry a litre of water per person per hour – the nearest river is seasonal and usually resembles a string of green puddons. October brings mushroom hunters and the first wood smoke; the oak canopy turns bronze and you can breakfast outside without melting butter. Winter is sharp: night temperatures hover just above freezing, the castle track glazes over with black ice, but the sky turns cobalt and you’ll have the paths to yourself. Snow is rare; when it arrives the village declares a fiesta because no one can get to work.

There is no cash machine, no petrol station, no Sunday bus. Fill the tank and your wallet in Cáceres or Trujillo before you turn off the EX-208. The village shop keeps eccentric hours – officially 09:00–11:00 and 17:00–19:00, but if María’s grand-daughter has a school play she’ll lock up early. Stock up on bread, water and sunscreen even if you plan to eat out; the bar kitchen closes without warning when the cook’s mother needs her shopping. Mobile coverage is patchy; Vodafone roams, Orange gives up entirely. Download offline maps and the Extremadura bird guide before you leave the main road.

Eating (and Not Going Hungry)

Evenings revolve around the bar’s three outside tables. Order pluma ibérica – a feather-shaped cut from the pig’s shoulder – and it arrives singed on a clay dish, pink in the middle, tasting more like steak than pork. The house red comes from a coop near Almendralejo; at €2.50 a glass it’s cheaper than cola and slides down with dangerous ease. If you need vegetables, ask for “ensalada de la huerta” and you’ll get whatever is productive: lettuce, tomato, cucumber, raw onion the size of a tennis ball. Pudding is usually ignored; instead the barman pours chupitos of homemade hierbas, an aniseedy liquor that tastes like liquid licorice allsorts. Drink two and you’ll believe the castle is climbable in flip-flops. Drink three and you’ll probably try.

For a proper sit-down meal, Casa Rural La Encina serves dinner to non-guests if you book before noon. The menu is short: caldereta de cordero (lamb stew), migas (fried breadcrumbs with garlic and grapes) and a vegetarian option only if the gardener has delivered aubergines. Prices hover around €14 for a main; portions assume you have walked 15 km. They will drive you back to the square afterwards because the lane is unlit and they don’t want foreign blood on their conscience.

Leaving Without the T-shirt

There is no souvenir shop, no fridge magnet, no rack of postcards. The only thing you can take away is a vacuum-packed 100 g packet of jamón cut from the bar’s own leg – €18, handed over in a brown paper bag that will stain your suitcase if you forget it. Monroy does not need to sell itself; it has already decided what it is worth. Come for the silence, stay for the ham, leave before the church bell reminds you that somewhere a city is commuting.