Nestares

The church bell in Nestares strikes six and the sound rolls down the valley faster than any vehicle. At this altitude—861 metres above the wine presses of Logroño—evening arrives early and the air carries the scent of oak smoke before the sun has properly left the sky. Eighty-seven residents live here, give or take a student who has left for university and not yet decided to return. Their houses cling to a spur of the Camero Nuevo range like barnacles on an upturned hull, roofs angled to shrug off winter snow that can cut the village off for days.

Stone, Tile and the Memory of Snow

Every building material in Nestares is borrowed from the mountain. Walls are random-rubble limestone, the mortar between them the colour of river silt. Arab tiles, curved like a row of clasped hands, channel rain into stone gutters that empty straight onto the lane. The oldest balconies—deep enough to store firewood underneath—project far enough for a woman to shake a tablecloth over the drop without leaving her kitchen. Conical chimney pots, some still wearing the original lime wash, stand in clusters like chess pieces frozen mid-game.

The lanes are barely two metres wide; tractors have scraped stripes of ochre on the corners where the road bends. Visitors who insist on driving to their holiday cottage usually reverse the final hundred metres because there is nowhere to turn. Park on the ridge above, walk down past the stone trough that catches melt-water, and the village rewards the effort with sudden quiet. No café terraces, no piped music, only the click of a latch and a dog barking two streets away.

San Millán church occupies the only flat ground. Built in the sixteenth century, remodelled in the eighteenth, it is neither large nor ornate. What makes it remarkable is the way its west door frames the valley: from the threshold you look straight down the throat of the Iregua, past the apple terraces of Brieva de Cameros to the blue-grey blur of the Moncalvillo range. Step inside and the temperature drops five degrees; the stone floor still carries the chill of the previous night even at midday in July.

Walking Maps That Stop at the Edge

Footpaths leave Nestares as if embarrassed by company. One track climbs south-west through holm oak to the abandoned hamlet of Robres, roofs collapsed inwards like broken pies. Another switchbacks north to the Puerto de Santa Inés, gaining 300 metres in two kilometres; from the pass you can see the Ebro plain shimmering in heat haze forty kilometres away. Neither route is way-marked beyond a cairn or a splash of red paint on a boulder. The regional government promises proper signage every spring, then remembers the budget has gone to maintain the wine-route tarmac below.

Maps sold in Logroño bookshops show blank space here. Local shepherds use memory, not cartography, and they walk faster than most hikers despite being twice the age. If you prefer company, ask at the bakery van that stops on Thursday mornings—its owner, Jesús, sometimes guides mushroom hunters in October for twenty euros a head, provided you bring your own knife and basket. He will also tell you which slopes still hold unexploded Civil War shells, a warning that sounds casual until you notice the pocked stonework on the church tower.

Weather changes without introduction. A morning that begins in bright sunshine can collapse into cloud by eleven; by twelve the cloud has dropped to roof level and the temperature has lost eight degrees. Even in May it is wise to pack a fleece and a lightweight waterproof. The upside is air so clean that diesel fumes from an occasional passing 4×4 smell almost exotic.

Food That Follows the Frost

There is no restaurant in Nestares. The nearest asador sits six kilometres away in El Rasillo de Cameros, beside a reservoir where red kites hunt. What you will find is a weekly bread van, a mobile fishmonger from Santo Domingo de la Calzada on Friday afternoons, and a tiny shop run out of somebody’s front room—open when the owner feels like it, closed when she goes down-valley to visit her sister.

Self-catering is the norm. Cooks shop in Torrecilla on the way up: lentils from Castilla, morcilla from Villoslada, lamb shoulder from a butcher who still chalks prices on a slate. Kitchens in the village are built for winter stews, not summer salads—broad hearths, iron hooks for cauldrons, and a wood pile stacked high enough to last until March. Evening meals tend to be light: scrambled eggs with local setas, perhaps a tomato salad if the garden survived the frost. Midday is for the heavy stuff—cordero al chilindrón, potatoes and peppers slow-cooked until the sauce turns brick-red.

August changes the rhythm. Fiestas for San Millán bring back offspring who now work in Bilbao or Zaragoza. The plaza fills with folding tables, a sound system powered by a generator rattles in the back of a Peugeot pick-up, and teenage girls dance until the generator runs out of petrol around three. By Sunday night the village is quiet again; empty wine cartons pile up beside the recycling bins like collapsed wedding cakes.

How to Arrive, How to Leave

From Logroño take the N-111 towards Soria. After 24 km turn right at Torrecilla en Cameros onto the LR-250, then climb for another 18 km of hairpins. Google Maps quotes forty-five minutes; allow an hour once you factor in tractors, wandering sheep, and the temptation to stop for photographs. The asphalt is decent but narrows to a single lane with passing bays in places. Winter tyres are not compulsory, yet locals fit them anyway; the same bend that is charming in September can be lethal in January when shaded ice lingers until noon.

Accommodation is limited to four holiday cottages and two rural rooms in restored barns. Weekend rates hover around €90 a night for two, including firewood. Book early for October—mushroom hunters snap up weekends as soon as the first rains arrive—and again for the first fortnight in August when the fiesta calendar fills every bed within a twenty-kilometre radius. Mid-week in March you can have the village to yourself, though restaurants down-valley may close on Tuesdays without warning.

Mobile coverage is patchy. Vodafone and Orange pick up a signal on the ridge; inside the lanes you are reliant on Wi-Fi from the cottage router, assuming the owner paid last month’s bill. Power cuts accompany storms, usually restored within two hours, long enough to remember what darkness feels like when every neighbour switches off their lights before midnight.

Leave early if you must be somewhere. Fog can park itself on the pass until ten o’clock, and the bread van blocks the only through-street for twenty minutes while customers gossip. On the descent you will glimpse Nestares one last time—tile roofs swimming in morning cloud, the church tower poking through like a ship’s mast. Then the road drops into the pine shade and the village returns to the quiet it has kept for centuries, broken only by the bell that marks the hour for people who already know the time without looking.