Castilblanco de los Arroyos

The storks always arrive first. Before the bar shutters clatter open, before the church bell tolls seven, they clack their yellow bills from nests the size of satellite dishes balanced on the tower of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios. By the time the first boots—mud-splattered, blister-plastered, British—shuffle into Plaza de España, the birds have already claimed the best vantage points.

Castilblanco de los Arroyos sits 313 m above sea level on the western edge of Seville’s Sierra Norte, but altitude is less interesting than momentum: most foreigners reach the village because their legs give out somewhere between Seville and the next day’s slog to Almadén de la Plata. The Via de la Plata, the old Roman silver road turned long-distance footpath, funnels a thin trickle of pilgrims through streets that were designed for ox-carts, not rucksacks the size of fridges.

A town that keeps its gates closed

Whitewash still gleams from last winter’s repaint, yet the houses turn blank shoulders to the street: heavy wooden doors, iron rejas, the occasional ceramic tile announcing “Se vende huevos”. Nothing is staged for passing trade. There are no souvenir shops, no tasting menus, no multilingual chalkboards promising “authentic tapas”. The nearest thing to a gift outlet is the Dia supermarket on Avenida de Andalucía, where you can buy a €1.20 pilgrim stamp alongside your tinned tuna.

The historic core is a five-minute rectangle. Calle Ancha narrows to Callejón del Agua, then spills into a mirador where the view rips open across dehesa—cork oak and holm oak stitched together by stone walls that pre-date most European capitals. Morning light brings out every shade of green the British Isles forgot: sage, khaki, olive, emerald. By midday in July the same landscape flattens to parched biscuit and sensible walkers retreat to whichever bar opens earliest.

Water, or the lack of it

Arroyo means stream, and the municipality borrows its name from the seasonal veins that score the hills. In a wet March they gurgle, spawning sudden pools deep enough for a dog to splash. By late June most have retreated to smooth limestone beds where the only movement is a lizard. The council has bolted a single public drinking fountain on the Camino route 10 km south—pilgrims talk about it with the reverence Londoners reserve for a functioning District line.

Inside the village, taps run normally; outside, you carry. Setting off northwards without two litres is the quickest way to discover how politely Spanish farmers refuse to share their wells.

Where to lay your head—and your feet

Accommodation is binary. Option one: Hostal Montera Plaza, seven rooms above a restaurant that smells of grilled fat at dawn. €45 gets you a double with a bathroom the colour of 1994 and a window onto the square where storks argue until dusk. Option two: the municipal albergue behind the health centre, donation €5, mattress wrapped in plastic so the bedbugs give up. Lights-out at 22:30, communal dinner at eight. British voices swap Compeed tips and debate whether the next stage is really 21 km or closer to 25. Someone always mentions the killer ascent after Santiponce; someone else swears it’s flat.

Booking matters only in August, when Seville empties northwards for the feria holidays and every cousin who ever left Castilblanco remembers they own a key. The rest of the year you can roll up dusty and be welcomed, provided you can produce a pilgrim passport or at least look convincingly miserable.

Eating without flourish

Local gastronomy is what happens when a butcher, a baker and a grandmother share the same larder. Try the guiso de jabalí at El Rincón del Beni (weekends only, €12) and you’re eating wild boar shot the previous week, simmered with bay from somebody’s garden. Bar Kibarpe opens at seven for the early coach crowd: coffee strong enough to float a spanner, tostada scraped with tomato and a sheen of olive oil, all for €2 if you stand at the counter.

Vegetarians get the traditional welcome—thinly disguised pity—yet the Dia stocks hummus and the albergue cook defaults to lentils when the meat donation fails to arrive. British expectations of “chips” are satisfied everywhere: they arrive thin, crisp and actually hot, the antidote to every soggy pub portion back home.

Walking beyond the postcard

Sendero de la Ribera leaves town past the cemetery, drops into a cork-oak hollow and follows a dry watercourse for 4 km until the path peters out at a private gate. Add another hour if you branch north on the Camino dirt track towards the abandoned Cortijo de Lora; vultures circle over sheer sandstone cut by the Romans for their road bed. Spring brings rock-rose and lavender, plus enough mud to glue a boot sole to your ankle. Summer turns the same route into a frying pan—start before eight or accept sunstroke as penance.

Cyclists arrive on mountain bikes, discover the gradients average 8 % and quietly push. Horse-riding is advertised from a ranch west of the A-66, €25 an hour, but you need to WhatsApp a day ahead and speak enough Spanish to argue about helmets.

When things go sideways

Rain can transform the Camino access lane into greasy clay that slides walkers sideways towards the guardrail. In August the thermometer touches 42 °C; the municipal pool opens only at weekends and charges €2, so pilgrims cluster around the health-centre fountain pretending to refill bottles while soaking their heads. Transport is the perennial grumble: no railway, no scheduled bus. Miss the 18:15 coach from Seville to Guillena and a taxi for the final 17 km costs €30—more than most people’s nightly budget. Car hire from Seville airport works out cheaper for two, provided you remember the village has one petrol pump that closes at 21:00.

Last orders

Evening mass finishes, lights dim, and the square returns to the storks and the odd feral cat. British voices fade as hostel doors close; tomorrow the path climbs 500 m into the sierra before dropping towards the old silver mines of Almadén. Castilblanco will reset to its own pulse: bread van at eight, farmers’ radios crackling with olive prices, women sweeping doorsteps with the patience of people who never counted on passing trade. Stay longer than a night and the village lets you borrow that rhythm; leave at dawn and it resets, already half-forgotten, like the faint chalk arrows that guided you in.