Petilla de Aragón

Stand in Petilla’s single square, turn through 360 degrees, and every horizon belongs to Aragón. The village itself is Navarra, yet the regional border loops east, north and west again, leaving this granite knot of thirty-odd houses marooned inside foreign territory. School atlases love the oddity; drivers approaching on the NA-5411 experience it as a sudden change of asphalt colour and a road sign that insists you have never left Navarra. Either way, the place is less a destination than a conversation starter.

The Nobel laureate who left

A blue enamel plaque on Calle Nueva marks the birthplace of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the self-taught neuro-anatomist who drew neurons the way other people draw maps and collected a Nobel in 1906 for proving that the nervous system is made of discrete cells. The house is open three afternoons a week in summer, two in winter, and contains one microscope, a slate he used as a boy, and reproductions of the ink drawings that changed biology. Entry is free; the custodian is likely to be the same woman who keeps the key to the church and will expect a €1 donation for lighting. If the door is locked, peer through the window: the wallpaper is original 1850s, a pattern of sepia ferns that looks oddly like the dendrites Cajal later spent his life sketching.

Beyond the plaque the village offers no further museums, gift shops or interpretive centres. That is the point. Stone lanes climb and descend with the topography, so a five-minute stroll can involve sixty metres of vertical gain. Wooden balconies, warped by decades of Atlantic weather that somehow sneaks across the Pyrenees, project just far enough to let neighbours lean out and argue about rainfall without leaving their kitchens. The seventeenth-century church of La Asunción keeps its tower door bolted against the wind; ring at the presbytery and someone will usually fetch the key. Inside, a single Gothic Virgin, polychromed in ox-blood red, surveys an interior that smells of candle smoke and wet sandstone – the scent of high-altitude worship.

Walking above two regions

Forestry tracks leave the upper edge of the village as if embarrassed by the fuss below. None are way-marked to British standards, but the main path, signed “Cresta de la Sierra 4 km”, is easy to follow: keep the oak woods on your left and the valley of the river Aragón on your right. After forty minutes the track narrows to a sheep trod and emerges on a limestone rim at 1 180 m. From here you can watch thunderstorms walk across the Ebro basin while remaining in sunshine yourself – a meteorological party trick caused by the sudden jump in altitude. Return the same way, or contour east until a gravel service road drops you back to the NA-5410, a 6 km loop that takes two hours and saves retracing steps.

Winter alters the arithmetic. Snow can arrive in November and linger until March; the same minor roads that feel sporting in October become sheet ice at dawn. Chains are advisable from 700 m upwards, and the regional government sometimes closes the last 4 km without warning. Summer, by contrast, is rarely oppressive: even in August the thermometer stalls in the mid-twenties, though the sun is fierce and shade scarce. Spring brings wild crocus and the clatter of storks returning to the electricity pylons; autumn smells of wet leaf and grilled peppers drifting up from village kitchens.

Where to eat, sleep and fill the tank

There is no hotel, hostel or campsite in Petilla. The nearest beds are in Sos del Rey Católico, twelve minutes down the hill, a walled town with two converted palacios and a handful of casas rurales. Most visitors treat Petilla as a half-day add-on, arriving after breakfast and leaving before the siesta shutters clang shut at two. If you do linger, Restaurante Iralde on the square serves a weekday menú del día for €13: ternasco (milk-fed lamb) roasted until the rim fat turns to salty crackling, followed by cuajada, a sheep-milk junket drizzled with local honey. Vegetarians get escalivada of aubergine and piquillo peppers, though you must ask; the default accompaniment is still chips. House wine comes from Bodegas Ochoa in nearby Olite, light enough to drink at lunch and still tackle the 837-metre walk back to the car.

Cash is essential. The only cash machine stands in Navardún, 18 km away, and Iralde does not take cards. Petrol is equally scarce: fill up in Sangüesa before turning onto the minor roads. Mobile reception flickers between Vodafone and Orange; download an offline map before leaving the A-21.

How to get there without arguing with the sat-nav

From the UK the simplest route is a morning flight to Zaragoza, collect a hire car, and head north on the A-21 for 95 km. After Yesa take the NA-5410, a smooth but empty lane that corkscrews through pine plantations. The junction for Petilla is unsigned beyond a kilometre marker that reads “12”; blink and you will land in Aragón by mistake. Pamplona airport is marginally closer (1 h 45) but offers fewer flights outside the San Fermín weeks. There is no bus service; taxis from Sangüesa cost €50 each way and drivers may refuse the return journey if snow is forecast.

The catch

Petilla is not “unspoilt” in the brochure sense; it is simply small. You can walk every street in fifteen minutes, and once the Nobel house and the church have been ticked off, the remaining pleasure is mainly topographical – standing on a contour line and contemplating the absurdity of nineteenth-century cartographers. On weekdays out of season you may meet nobody at all except a retired teacher walking a beagle and a farmer shifting hay. Some visitors find the silence exhilarating; others discover they have driven two hours for what amounts to a geography lesson with lunch. If you belong to the second group, console yourself with Sos del Rey Católico’s medieval lanes on the descent, or divert to the Leyre monastery for Gregorian chant at dusk. The map, after all, is only half the journey.