Torralba del Río

The church bell tolls once, twice, then stops. Nobody appears. A single tractor idles at the edge of Torralba del Río, its driver chatting across a dry-stone wall while wheat stalks brush the tyres. At 635 metres above sea-level the air is thinner than on the coastal plain, and sound carries differently – voices seem to detach from bodies and drift over the corrugated iron barns. You are standing in a village that could fit inside a football pitch, halfway between Pamplona and Logroño, and the loudest thing is the wind.

A village measured in footsteps

Torralba del Río is not on the main Camino Francés, but it borrows the pilgrim rhythm: slow, deliberate, shoe-leather paced. From the stone cross beside the church to the last house on the lane is barely four hundred metres; the entire circuit, including the track that loops past the disused threshing floor, takes twenty minutes if you dawdle. Stone lintels carry the date 1764, 1811, 1893 – each carved when these houses were rebuilt after fire, war, or simply the wear of centuries. Look up and you’ll spot a worn coat-of-arms above a doorway: five scallop shells, the marker of a family who once gave food to Santiago-bound walkers before the road down to Torres del Río was even paved.

Inside the parish church of San Miguel the temperature drops five degrees. The building is medieval in plan, later dressed in baroque plaster, but the tower is the real compass point. Climb the external stair if the door is open (weekend Mass only, or when Pilar has the key) and you can see the cereal ocean stretching north until the land buckles into the Sierra de Codés. In June the wheat is still green; by mid-July it turns bronze and the wind sends waves across it like a North Sea swell.

What passes for activity

There is no shop, no cash machine, no year-round bar. The last grocery closed in 2007; the owner retired and nobody replaced her. If you arrive after a two-hour drive from Bilbao expecting an espresso, you’ll be disappointed. Instead, plan like a local: fill the tank in Estella, buy chorizo and bread in Torres del Río, and carry water because the public fountain by the church is turned off in drought years. Picnic tables sit under the pines behind the cemetery; the view south takes in the ridge of Monte San Donato and, on very clear days, the white blur of the Monasterio de Codés where the road dead-ends.

Walking options are modest but satisfying. A farm track drops east towards the Linares gorge – thirty minutes down, forty back up if you’re fit. Griffon vultures ride the thermals above the cliffs and, in late afternoon, the stone walls throw long shadows that make the landscape look larger than it is. For something flatter, follow the dirt service road that skirts the wheat fields westwards; after 3 km you reach an abandoned stone hut once used by shepherds crossing from Álava. Turn round when you’ve had enough – there are no loops, and night falls quickly once the sun slips behind the ridge.

Beds and board

The only accommodation inside the village is the Hospedería Nuestra Señora de Codés, a monastery hostel attached to the church. It has fourteen beds, twin rooms with blankets that smell faintly of cedar cupboards, and a curfew bell at 22:00. Dinner is served at seven sharp: soup, chicken or hake, yoghurt. Breakfast is toast, jam, Nescafé – acceptable to British stomachs but don’t expect fried eggs. The warden, Brother Javier, will show you the twelfth-century fresco fragment in the side chapel if you ask politely before Vespers. When the hostel is full – weekends in May and September – the nearest beds are 20 minutes away in Torres del Río, or 35 back in Estella’s hostals.

If you prefer walls that aren’t monastic, Casa Gaztelu in nearby Villamayor de Monjardín rents a self-catering studio for €70 a night. The kitchen has a two-ring hob and a toaster; buy supplies first because the village shop shuts at 13:00 and doesn’t reopen.

Seasons of wheat and wind

Spring brings green mist across the fields and temperatures that hover around 16 °C – ideal for walking without carrying litres of water. Wild asparagus appears in the hedgerows; locals collect it in April for tortilla. Autumn is equally gentle, with the added bonus of harvest dust catching the low sun and turning the air golden. In July and August the mercury can touch 32 °C; shade is scarce on the lanes and the earth hardens into ruts that twist ankles. Midday hiking is foolish – better follow the Spanish timetable and venture out at dawn or after 17:00 when the shadows lengthen and the threshing floors glow pink.

Winter is quiet, sometimes too quiet. The road from the A-12 (NA-7200) climbs through oak woods where ice lingers until eleven in the morning. Carry chains from December to February; the council grits, but not before the school bus has slid at least once. Days are crisp, the wheat a stubbled carpet, and the village feels half-abandoned – many houses shuttered until their owners return for Christmas or the fiestas.

A fiesta that still fits in the square

The feast of San Miguel on 29 September turns Torralba del Río into a living room. The population swells to maybe 120 as grandchildren come up from Pamplona. A marquee the size of a double garage goes up beside the church; the village band – two trumpets, a tuba and a snare – plays pasodobles after Mass. Lunch is roast lamb, Rioja served in plain glasses, and a sponge cake that tastes of aniseed. By 18:00 the children have vanished to the playground and the older men are playing mus, a Basque card game that involves more shouting than strategy. If you want to join in, learn the phrase “¿Puedo mirar?” and stand quietly; someone will explain the rules. By midnight the square is empty again, chairs stacked, lights off, bell silent.

The honest verdict

Torralba del Río will not fill a long weekend. It has no souvenir shops, no Michelin mentions, no prehistoric caves to justify a detour. What it offers is scale: a place small enough to understand in an hour, yet large enough in atmosphere to slow your pulse for the rest of the day. Come if you need a pause between the wine-route bustle of La Rioja and the pilgrim crowds of Estella. Bring trainers, a paperback, and sandwiches because the café isn’t opening any time soon. Stay for the night if silence is what you’re after – the darkness here is complete once the monastery switches off its porch light, and the Milky Way looks close enough to snag on the church tower. Leave before you start counting the remaining inhabitants; some villages are better kept slightly mysterious, and Torralba del Río is one of them.