Villarejo

At 834 metres, Villarejo sits just high enough for the air to feel thinner, cleaner, and for the thermometer to drop three degrees below the valley floor. Twenty-nine residents remain when the harvest ends, and the census swells only when sons and daughters drive up from Logroño at the weekend to check on ageing parents. British walkers arriving from the Camino de Santiago sometimes detour the 12 km east of Nájera on a whim, expecting a bar, perhaps a terrace in the sun. They find stone, adobe, and a church bell that rings only for funerals.

The village occupies a saddle between cereal terraces and low oak scrub. Nothing is hidden; nothing is showcased. A single lane crawls in, widens for twenty metres outside the church of San Andrés, then shrinks again into a farm track. Parking means tucking the nearside wheels into the ditch so a tractor can squeeze past. Leave the car here and the only soundtrack is the wind combing through barley stubble and the click of electricity meters inside dark hallways.

Stone, Straw and Seconds-Old Shadows

Houses are the colour of the soil they stand on: ochre, grey, rust. Walls are sixty centimetres thick; summers stay cool, winters stubbornly cold. Adobe patches show finger-wide cracks after July’s first storm, repaired the following Sunday with the same clay dug from the back garden. Timber doors hang on forged iron straps; many still bear the initials of couples married before the Civil War. Lean in and you smell sheep wool stored in the loft, the sweet dust of last year’s grapes fermenting in buried tinajas beneath the floor.

The church keeps its key under a flowerpot. Inside, a single nave, no side chapels, paint peeling in parchment curls. The font is a repurposed Roman milestone; the priest arrives twice a month from nearby Cordovín and brings the Host in a Tupperware box. Photography is allowed, flash or not, because no one has thought to forbid it. Stand at the altar steps at five in the afternoon and the sun fires a rectangle of gold across the flagstones; ten minutes later it has moved on, the church already cooling, ready for night.

Walking the Lomas without a Map

Farm tracks strike out north and south. Neither is way-marked; both are public. The southern loop climbs 160 metres in just under a kilometre, thighs noticing the altitude if you’ve flown in from sea-level Gatwick the same morning. At the crest the view spills west down the Najerilla valley, vineyards forming green geometry along the river, the corduroy of the Sierra de la Demanda turning indigo as the light thickens. Evening comes fast: by seven in October the temperature has fallen eight degrees; by eight the first headlights thread along the N-120 far below.

Boots are advised, but trainers suffice when the ground is dry. After rain the clay grips like wet treacle; locals drive their cars uphill in reverse to prevent the front wheels bulldozing into the verge. A short circular walk—village to ridge, ridge along the contour, contour back to the church—takes ninety minutes, two if you stop to identify Dartford warblers flitting through the kermes oak. No café awaits your return; bring water and, if you’re British enough to feel the chill, a flask of tea. The only public tap stands beside the cemetery gate, fed by a spring that tastes of iron and melts snow in April.

Eating: Bring It or Book It

Villarejo has no shop, no bar, no bakery van on Tuesdays. The last village store closed when the proprietor died in 1998; shelves that once held tinned sardines now store rabbit cages. Plan food like you plan petrol. In Nájera the Covirán supermarket sells manchego and picos for impromptu picnics; the bakery opposite the parador will slice jamón and make up a bocadillo if you ask before the 2 pm lunch rush. Up here you eat what you carry, or you descend eight kilometres to Azofra where El Ferial grills lamb chops over vine cuttings for €14 a plate. Book at weekends; Riojan families treat Sunday lunch like church—non-negotiable and invariably full.

Harvest season, mid-September to mid-October, is the single window when strangers are invited in. A co-operative lorry parks at the entrance, its conveyor belt rattling grapes into stainless steel tanks. Anyone willing to pick gets fed at 11 sharp: cocido riojano, bread, wine in plastic cups. Payment is by the crate; experienced hands fill sixty before noon, newcomers twenty. Arrive with gloves; the vines scratch and the dew soaks trainers within minutes. Nights drop to 6 °C, so bring layers and a head-torch—sunrise picking starts at seven, legal only because the village ignores Madrid’s labour-clock changes.

Winter Locks the Gate

December to February the road ices over where the forest shades the tarmac. Villagers scatter ash from their stoves to keep the gradient passable; the council grader appears after three days of complaints. Snow is patchy but sudden—one January storm dropped 40 cm in six hours, cutting power for four days. Mobile signal dies with the first flake; EE and Vodafone both show ‘SOS only’. If you rent a cottage (there are two, both on Airbnb, both owned by cousins) the fireplace is not decorative. Bring kindling, or pay José María €5 a sack, cash only, delivered to the door by wheelbarrow because his car refuses the hill.

Summer, by contrast, is benign. At 30 °C in Logroño it is 25 °C here, the breeze lifting the scent of resin from the pines. Swifts nest under the church eaves; at dusk they dive between television aerials like Spitfires over Kent. The village well, now electric, still overflows into a stone trough—perfect for soaking feet after a 15-km circuit to Badarán and back. Mid-July fiestas last one evening: a barbecue in the square, music from a single speaker, home-made chuletón steaks sold at cost. Visitors are welcome but not announced; buy tickets from the mayor’s wife, identifiable because she carries the float in a plastic basin.

Getting Here, Getting Out

No bus route serves Villarejo. The nearest stop is in Azofra, two kilometres of steep lane away; ALSA runs four services daily from Logroño, the earliest at 07:10. A taxi from the regional capital costs €28 if you phone the night before; Uber does not operate, and the rank outside the bus station vanishes at siesta time. Car hire is sensible: the A-12 autopista to Nájera takes 35 minutes from Logroño airport, then the LR-413 minor road climbs 12 km past wheat silos and the abandoned cigarette factory at Casalarreina. Petrol appears at Ventas de Torrejal 8 km before the turn-off; after that the gauge is your problem.

Accommodation is limited. The two casas rurales sleep six and four respectively; expect stone floors, wool blankets, Wi-Fi that falters when the microwave is on. Prices hover round €90 a night for the larger house, minimum two nights at weekends. Both accept dogs, charge €10 extra, and request you do not let them chase the neighbour’s sheep. The nearest hotel with a reception desk is the parador in Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 22 km west, double room with breakfast €135, book early for Easter week.

The Honest Ledger

Villarejo will not keep you busy. You will not find artisan gin, flamenco tablaos, or a medieval castle repurposed as a cookery school. You may meet silence so complete it rings in your ears, and residents who nod but do not chat until the third encounter. Come for two hours and you might leave after one; come for a week with walking boots and a curiosity for how food is coaxed from dry soil and you will begin to understand the place. The village offers no postcard moment, yet the memory of its light—low, slanted, turning the fields copper while the church bell counts the days—tends to follow travellers home, cropping up months later when rain hits a British window and the kettle switches off with the same metallic click.