Welcome to the De Paja y Barro blog
Some places cannot be told in a single page. Our rural house in Valencia de Alcántara is one of them, and the Sierra de San Pedro around it, another. That is why this blog is born: to tell slowly what is lived slowly.
Who we are: a house that breathes
De Paja y Barro is a sustainable rural retreat between San Vicente de Alcántara and Valencia de Alcántara, in the heart of the Sierra de San Pedro (Cáceres, Extremadura, Spain). But before being accommodation, it is a conviction made into walls: we rebuilt an old structure raising every wall with straw and clay, the materials the land gave us. True natural building, with timber modules on the upper floor and a double-sided fireplace as the heart of the house.
The result is hard to explain and very easy to feel: thick, cool walls that smell of clean earth, proper silence, and a temperature the house itself regulates without artifice. Cool in summer; in winter, the warmth of the fireplace stays the night.
Why this blog
Because when our guests leave, they almost always tell us the same thing: "we had no idea there was so much here". And it is true. This border region holds the largest megalithic complex in Europe, a medieval Jewish quarter listed as a heritage site, the Tajo Internacional Natural Park with its black storks, and two Portuguese gems, Marvão and Castelo de Vide, half an hour from our porch.
This blog wants to be the field notebook we would have loved to find ourselves: hiking routes among dolmens, local festivals such as the Mascarrones or the Boda Regia, where to eat real lamb stew, when the dehesa blooms, and also stories of the house itself and of what living in a straw and clay building feels like.
Our philosophy: conscious rural tourism
We believe in rural tourism that leaves its mark on the traveller, not on the land. We rent the house as a whole, to one group only, because true rest is not shared with strangers. We build with natural materials because energy efficiency and healthy living are not a trend: they are how things were always built here. And we recommend what is local, from the olive oil of nearby mills to the cork of San Vicente de Alcántara, because the best souvenir of a rural getaway is having touched the authentic.
Our motto sums it up: handmade for unhurried living.
What you will find here
We will publish articles on what to see and do in Valencia de Alcántara and its region, day trips into Portugal across the border, birdwatching in the protected ZEPA of the Sierra de San Pedro, zero-kilometre Extremaduran gastronomy, the calendar of local festivals and, from time to time, a window into the life of the house: how clay ages, what waking up between breathing walls feels like, and why more and more travellers seek to disconnect in a sustainable rural retreat.
The journey begins
If you got here looking for a rural house in Valencia de Alcántara to disconnect, you know where we are: four bedrooms, an infinity pool, eight guests and the whole Sierra de San Pedro around you. And if you arrived out of curiosity, stay: what is coming is worth it.
Would you like to live the house
before reading it?