Deleitosa

The church bell strikes noon. Two elderly men in flat caps pause their conversation outside the Bar Majano long enough to watch a cyclist push uphill towards the olive groves. Nothing else moves. Half an hour later the square is still in full sun, shutters are down, and the only sound is a caged canary somewhere behind a first-floor grille. This is Deleitosa on a weekday in May, 613 metres above sea level and decades away from the coast.

A Map Won’t Help You Here

The village sits on the southern flank of the Villuercas range, the part of Extremadura that the guidebooks usually skip in their hurry to reach Cáceres or Mérida. Drive south-east from Navalmoral de la Mata on the EX-118 and the road climbs through cork oak and umbrella pine until the horizon tilts and the stone houses appear, clinging to a ridge like limpets. Park at the top by the concrete football pitch; everything worth seeing is within five minutes’ walk, but the gradients are steep enough to make it feel like ten.

Start at the Iglesia de la Inmaculada Concepción, a building that has never quite decided which century it belongs to. The tower is sixteenth-century, the nave was rebuilt after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, and the interior was whitewashed in the 1960s by a priest who thought baroque was a mortal sin. The result is sober, almost Presbyterian, until you notice the gilded altar screen flickering in the candlelight and realise the village still spends money on beeswax rather than LED bulbs. The door is supposed to open at 10:30, but the keyholder is also the postman and some mornings the post takes priority.

From the church doorway three streets drop away like spokes. Calle Real has the only continuous run of stone portals; look for the date 1789 carved upside-down on one lintel – the mason was illiterate and nobody bothered to flip it. Calle Nueva is newer by a century and narrower by half, built when families still kept their mules downstairs and their pigs on the roof terrace. The third lane peters out into a footpath that becomes the Camino de la Dehesa, the village’s main artery since before cars arrived.

What the Hills Remember

Walk fifteen minutes beyond the last house and you are inside the communal dehesa, 3,000 hectares of holm oak shared between forty-three owners who still count their wealth in acorns and pork. The path is a pale scar across the grass, wide enough for a mule cart but empty except for the occasional mountain-bike tyre track laid down by British gravel enthusiasts who discovered the area on Strava. They come for the gradients: a 12-kilometre loop south to the abandoned hamlet of Valdemorca gives 400 metres of climbing and panoramic views back towards the Gredos snowline. Carry two bottles; the only fountain is at kilometre eight and the water tastes strongly of iron.

Spring brings nightingales and wild peonies; October brings red admiral butterflies and the smell of fermenting chestnuts. In July and August the hills turn the colour of digestive biscuits and the temperature touches 38 °C by eleven in the morning. Locals with sense retreat indoors until seven; visitors who insist on hiking usually meet the village doctor later, begging for rehydration salts.

The Table Runs on Wood and Time

Back in the village, food appears when the wood-fired oven reaches temperature, never before. Asador El Majano lights up at 21:00 sharp; if you arrive at 20:55 you will wait outside with the rest of the English cyclists who read the same forum thread. Order the cordero lechal – milk-fed lamb roasted until the skin shatters like caramelised sugar. A half-kilo portion feeds two, costs €24, and comes with nothing more than a wedge of lemon and a plate of patatas meneás, potatoes fried in pimentón and enough olive oil to make the paper translucent. Vegetarians survive on tortilla and the house salad of lettuce, onion and grated tomato; vegans should probably keep walking.

House wine arrives in a plain glass bottle with no label and tastes like Beaujolais that has been to finishing school in the sun. A bottle is €6; water from the tap is free but carries enough calcium to fur a kettle in a week. Pudding is seldom offered – the oven is allowed to cool so the baker can start bread at 04:00 – so finish with coffee from a machine that has been hissing since 1983 and costs 90 cents if the barman likes you.

Sunday lunch is the social event of the week. Families from Madrid arrive with carrier bags of ensaladilla rusa made the night before, and the single pedestrian crossing becomes temporarily useless beneath a tide of Seat Leons. Book a table by Friday or you will end up eating crisps in the square with the teenagers.

Practicalities the Brochures Miss

There is no cash machine. The nearest is in Guadalupe twelve kilometres away, and it charges €2.50 for the privilege of accessing your own money. Both food shops shut between 14:00 and 17:00; if you need milk at 15:00 you are officially thirsty. Mobile coverage is patchy: Vodafone works on the church steps, EE gives up entirely, and WhatsApp voice messages arrive two hours late with the haunting delay of a séance.

Public transport is a school bus on weekdays that reaches Navalmoral at 07:15 and returns at 14:00. Miss it and a taxi costs €45; the driver’s number is written on the wall of the phone box but the phone itself disappeared in 2018. A hire car from Madrid airport takes two and a half hours on the A-5 and costs about €80 for three days with basic insurance. Petrol is five cents cheaper in Navalmoral than on the motorway; fill up before the final climb because the village garage closed when the owner retired.

Accommodation is limited to three village houses let as casas rurales. La Tahona has three bedrooms, beams the width of railway sleepers, and a kitchen equipped by someone who clearly bakes their own bread. Prices hover around €90 a night for the whole house, minimum two nights at weekends. Sheets smell of lavender and the Wi-Fi password is written on the back of a Holy Communion card. There is no heating beyond a wood stove; nights in January drop to –3 °C and the municipality only grits the road if the mayor’s cousin is visiting.

When to Come, When to Stay Away

Late March brings almond blossom and daytime highs of 18 °C; the village is half full of retired birdwatchers from Norfolk who know their hoopoes from their orioles. Mid-May is warmer, quieter, and the wild asparagus along the paths is still tender enough to eat. October means mushroom permits: ask at the town hall for a €5 licence that allows you to collect up to three kilos per day; the clerk will also tell you, sotto voce, which slopes the Guardia Civil never patrol.

August is a furnace. Both restaurants close for separate fortnights, the fountain in the square dries to a trickle, and the sole evening entertainment is a baroque recital in the church that doubles as the only air-conditioned building for thirty kilometres. British cyclists still appear, kitted out like Tour de France refugees, and are surprised when the supermarket owner refuses to sell them a single bottle of water at 13:30 because it is siesta.

Last Orders

Deleitosa will never make the cover of a glossy magazine. It has no castle, no Michelin stars, no craft brewery. What it offers instead is the Spain that time-share brochures edited out: a place where lunch is still the main event, where the baker knows every child’s name, and where the night sky is so dark that the Milky Way throws a shadow. Come with Spanish phrases, cash in your pocket, and no itinerary beyond the next meal. Leave before you start expecting the shops to open on time – that is the moment you will have stayed too long.