If you are a lover of high places, then you really should put Valdelinares on a travel itinerary at some point. Standing at 1,692 metres above sea level, it is the Spain’s highest municipality. To put that in context, the village is 350 metres higher than the UK’s highest summit.
There are many advantages to being situated at such a lofty position. Not least, the lower temperatures. During Spain’s increasingly hot summers, Valdelinares often escapes the worst ravages of the heat. It is on my AEMET favourites list, so every morning I see the predicted temperatures – and in summer the minimum temperature very rarely gets above 20°C. During the day the mercury goes up, but mostly stays below 30°C. For walkers, this is a godsend. It means you can be up with the larks (or before the larks) and do a route in the six hours or so that are available before noon, taking advantage of the ‘wolf light’ which appears before sun-up.
The village is also located in the ‘storm belt’ – an area of mountains that stretches from Teruel into Castellón province which often sees downpours when there is cold air about in the atmosphere. Regular precipitation which includes snow in winter (there are ski slopes around 3km from the village) has the benefit of making the area very green for much of the year, with lush mountain pasture feasted on by the ubiquitous livestock.
The smells of nature are extraordinarily good. The air seems so fresh in the mornings that it is impossible not to take enormous gulps of it. And around about, there are griffon vultures aplenty to gaze on, wild boar in some of the woods – and in early summer more butterflies than I have ever seen in one place, of varying sizes and colours. For nature lovers, a downside of Valdelinares would perhaps be the ski station, although this only operates during the winter months. Fortunately, the infrastructure associated with the winter sport is a long way from the village and most of the best walking routes. Also, it isn’t a particularly big ski station.
And, on to the walking. Starting from a launch pad of 1,700 metres means that it doesn’t take a huge amount of effort to reach even greater heights. There are some fantastic routes to be had from Valdelinares, with a couple of 2,000-metre summits nearby.
Read about the walks in following posts
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