Tarancón

The diesel gauge flashes red somewhere south of Aranjuez and the A-3 motorway unfurls across the ochre plateau like a tarmac ruler. Most British number plates peel off at exit 98 for the same reason: petrol is 15 c cheaper per litre than on the coast and the supermarket opens at 07.00. What they find five minutes up the CM-412 is a workaday market town that happens to sit on a limestone ridge 800 m above sea level, halfway between Madrid and the sea – a geographical accident that has turned Tarancón into the motorists’ pit-stop of La Mancha.

The balcony that nobody photographs

Locals call the place “Balcón de La Mancha” because, on the rare day the sierra air scrubs the dust away, you can sight the blue dent of the Cuenca hills 60 km off. The view is better from the cemetery than from any postcard vantage, which explains why no postcards exist. British visitors usually notice the altitude in a different way: step out of an air-conditioned car in July and the heat still slaps you, but the sweat evaporates fast enough to fool you into skipping the water bottle. Don’t – dehydration arrives quicker at altitude, and the town’s tap water tastes of the chalk aquifer that feeds it.

Orientation takes ninety seconds. The N-301 cuts straight through, lined with filling stations and drive-through bakeries. Above this commercial strip the old quarter climbs a gentle eminence; below it spreads a lattice of post-war estates and industrial units that service the agri-business sprawling across the plain. Wheat, vines and olives pay the municipal bills, and the silos beside the railway are painted white to keep the grain cool, giving the skyline a North-African feel that bewilders first-time arrivals.

Thirty minutes of stonework – exactly enough

The historic kernel is compact enough to explore while the tank fills, provided you remember Spanish pumps switch off after €120 whether the tank is full or not. Start at the Plaza Mayor, still paved with the traditional Castilian pattern of dark and light slabs that once helped mules keep their footing. The timbered balconies are later additions, bolted on in the 1950s when Franco’s agrarian reform filled town coffers, but the arcades underneath are original 18th-century and shelter a respectable bakery (open 06.30–14.00) that sells the ring-shaped pan de Tarancón, faintly sweet and designed for dunking in red wine at elevenses.

From the corner table at Café Hispano you stare straight at the tower of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, a Renaissance job built with stone ferried 40 km from Honrubia because the local stuff crumbled in winter frost. The interior is open 10.00–12.00 and 18.00–19.30; allow twenty minutes for the Flemish panels and the rather gloomy Baroque organ. English signage is non-existent, but the sacristan keeps a laminated A-4 sheet with a paragraph translation and will follow you round switching lights on and off like a patient stage manager.

Behind the church the Carmelite convent keeps its grille shut – cloistered nuns still bake the almond biscuits sold through the lazy-Susan hatch on Fridays – while two streets away the former grain store, El Pósito, has been converted into a cultural centre whose courtyard hosts summer concerts. The acoustics favour Spanish guitar; British visitors who stumble in expecting folk night are politely handed a plastic chair and a programme entirely in Castilian. Admission is free, the wine served in proper glasses, and nobody minds if you leave at the interval.

Garlic, lamb and a vineyard hotel

Food in Tarancón is calibrated for farmers, not foodies, which means portions defeat even hungry drivers. The local mantra runs: “Si no lleva ajo, no es de Tarancón” – if it doesn’t contain garlic, it isn’t from here. The signature dish, ajo arriero, is a brick-coloured mash of salt cod, potato and enough garlic to repel vampires across two counties. Order the half-ración; even that arrives on a soup plate the size of a steering wheel.

Serious eating is done at Finca La Estacada, ten minutes west among vineyards that sit at the plateau’s rim. The estate’s 28-room hotel has become the unofficial British embassy of the Cuenca belt: every car park contains at least one UK-plated estate loaded with deckchairs and bodyboards. The draw is the €26.50 menú del día – beetroot-cured salmon, slow-roast Segureño lamb, and three glasses of wine that start with a sauvignon-style white labelled Sin Sulfitos. Dinner bookings after 20.30 avoid the Madrid coach parties who photograph each course and stretch meals to two hours. Rooms mid-week in March hover round €85 B&B; August rockets to €140, but the underground corridor linking bedrooms to spa pool is air-conditioned and keeps mosquitos out, a detail more than one TripAdvisor reviewer calls “worth the detour alone”.

Logistics, not landscape

Tarancón will never compete with Cuenca’s hanging houses or Toledo’s sword-makers, and that, paradoxically, is why it works. The town offers the services missing from the intervening 200 km of motorway: clean loos, wheelchair-accessible cafés, and a Carrefour that stocks Marmite for homesick expats. The Repsol opposite the hospital has a separate bay for AdBlue, the only one between Valencia and the capital, which explains the queue of British motorhomes at 08.00 sharp.

If you decide to stay overnight, the Ansares Hotel beside the bull-ring provides the safest parking in town: swipe the room key at the garage barrier and a camera records every registration. Rooms are motel-functional but the showers are walk-in and powerful enough to blast off 600 km of road grime. A small spa stays open until 23.00; book a 30-min slot and you’ll share the jacuzzi with long-distance lorry drivers who treat the bubbles like a second office.

When to stop, when to drive on

Come between April and mid-June and the plateau glows green after winter cereals; temperatures hover in the low twenties and the smell of broom drifts through open windows. July and August bake, but nights cool to 16 °C thanks to the altitude – bearable if your accommodation has a pool. September brings the grape harvest and Finca La Estacada lays on stomping demonstrations that look better in photos than on shoes. Winter is bright, still and empty; hotels drop rates, cafés close early, and the wind that scours the ridge can ice a windscreen in minutes. Chains are not compulsory, but the CM-412 bends enough to make them prudent after sleet.

Leave time in the morning for the weekly Friday market that engulfs the N-301; stalls sell cheap espadrilles, rope-soled and dyed the colour of local soil, and the garlic braid you never knew you needed until you saw it hanging from a Bedford’s rear-view mirror. Buy early; by 13.00 traders are folding awnings and the queue back to the motorway already stretches to the grain silos.

Tarancón will never make the glossy guides, yet for anyone measuring Spain in 500-km chunks it offers a rare equilibrium: enough altitude for cool nights, enough infrastructure for a stress-free halt, and just enough history to justify stretching your legs while the tank clicks full. Fill up, stock up, look round the church, and you can be back on the road before the coffee cools – or stay, eat lamb, and let the plateau silence remind you why Spanish interior towns still matter, even if nobody quite remembers to photograph them.