Carrión de Calatrava

The bar owner sets a €2 caña on the counter and, without asking, fills a second glass with tap water. He has done this thousands of times: every day between April and October a column of dusty boots swings left off the N-120, crosses the stone bridge over the Pisuerga and looks for exactly three things—cold beer, somewhere to sleep, and a chemist that stocks Compeed. Carrion de Calatrava, population 5,000, survives on the rhythm of blistered feet.

The meseta’s only hill is a church tower

Most maps show a ruler-straight road slicing across Castilla-La Mancha; what they do not show is the wind that barrels unobstructed across the plateau, or the way the wheat shimmers like water when the sun is low. The village sits at 615 m but feels lower because the surrounding land is so flat. The only vertical relief is the 13th-century tower of Santa María, its medieval brickwork glowing amber at dusk. British walkers arriving after the 19 km slog from Frómista treat the tower as a finish-line banner: if you can still feel your toes, the worst of the day’s heat is over.

Inside, the church is refreshingly plain. No baroque excess, just a single nave, worn wooden pews and a 16th-century Flemish triptych that somebody once tried to sell to a dealer in Madrid. The sacristan keeps the lights off to save money; push the brass button by the door and you have 90 seconds to admire the paintings before everything plunges back into cool semi-darkness.

Two albergues, one rivalry

Opposite the church the red door of the Albergue Municipal squeaks open at 1 pm sharp. Volunteers—usually a retired couple from Valencia—hand out hospitalera stamps and allocate bunks: bottom ones to the over-60s, top to anyone who can still haul a rucksack above shoulder height. Around the corner the Albergue Parroquial, run by a taciturn nun known as Sister Conchi, offers identical facilities for the same €10, but insists on lights-out at 10 pm. Pilgrims spend the evening arguing over which is cleaner; both are spotless, the rivalry is simply something to talk about after ten days of wheat fields.

Beds fill by 3 pm, so anyone arriving later ends up in the Hostal Santiago on the main drag. It costs €35 for a single, €45 for a double, and the walls are thin enough to hear snoring through the plaster. Still, it has a bathtub—meseta gold-dust for those who have been sleeping in bunk rooms since Roncesvalles.

Calories and cash points

The Día supermarket locks its doors at 2 pm and reopens at 5, an interval that has caught out many a hungry walker who thought “late lunch” was a civilised idea. Stock up before siesta or live off bar crisps. Menús del peregrino appear at 7 pm: three courses, bread and a plastic tub of ice-cream for €11. The cooks know their audience—nothing spicy, nothing that might upset a stomach already shaken by 25 km of road. Huevos rotos con jamón is the local fallback: chips, runny egg, a few shavings of cured ham, demolished in minutes.

Vegetarians get tortilla; vegans get lettuce. The village wine, a young Valdepeñas rosado, arrives in frosted bottles and costs €1.50 a glass. Cards are refused under €10; the only ATM hides inside Caja Rural and it obeys bank hours, Monday to Friday 08:30-14:00. Run out of cash on Saturday and you will be washing dishes.

Geology you can feel in your calves

If you can walk without limping next morning, follow the dirt track signed “Volcán Hoyo del Mortero” south-west of the housing estate. After 25 minutes the wheat gives way to a shallow crater maybe 500 m across, its rim planted with olives that twist like bonsai. This is a maar, the remnant of a steam explosion when magma met groundwater during the Quaternary. You are standing inside one of 200 similar vents scattered across the Campo de Calatrava—none of them dramatic cones, all of them reminders that the meseta was once a geothermal battlefield. Pick up a piece of dark slag and you will see tiny vesicles where gas bubbled out 500,000 years before the first pilgrim complained about shin splints.

Underfoot the soil is brick-red, rich in iron and potassium; local farmers say tomatoes planted here need no extra fertiliser. The same minerals tint the façades of houses, so even new builds look baked by centuries.

What passes for a fiesta

Come mid-August the population doubles. The fiestas de la Virgen de la Asunción last four days, climaxing with a procession that leaves the church at 8 pm and returns at midnight, the statue swaying on the shoulders of men who have been drinking since noon. Brass bands play pasodobles; teenagers lob firecrackers into drains for the echo. A funfair sets up on the football pitch, its dodgems powered by a generator that sounds like a Boeing taking off. Pilgrims who assumed the village was asleep suddenly find themselves dodging teenagers on mopeds and sharing plaza bench space with great-aunts from Bilbao.

Semana Santa is quieter: two processions, no incense, a trumpet trio that can just about manage a hymn without splitting the high notes. Brits used to Seville’s gilt floats will find it all endearingly amateur, like a school play with candle wax and pointy hoods.

When to come, when to leave

April–May and September–October give you daylight walking hours without the July furnace. In winter the wind still blows but the wheat is stubble and the thermometer can dip below zero; albergues close early November and reopen 1 March. August is furnace-lite—34 °C instead of 39—but the meseta offers zero shade between villages. Start at dawn or pay the price.

Trains from London reach Valladolid in nine hours via Paris and Barcelona; from Valladidis ALSA coach takes 90 minutes to Carrion. Drivers leave the A-62 at junction 8, follow the CL-610 for 23 km and wonder why the sat-nav keeps promising bends that never arrive. Parking is free on the streets, paid on the plaza during fiestas (€5 a day, cash only—naturally).

Honest farewell

Carrion will never make anybody’s “must-see” list unless that list is written on the back of a pilgrim credential. It is a waypoint, a place to rest, re-tape your feet and drink something cold while the wheat sways like the sea. Stay more than one night and you will notice the shuttered houses, the young people who left for Madrid, the fact that the only bookshop became a nail salon. Yet the village keeps the road open, the beer cheap and the church door unlocked for whoever limps in. That is probably enough.