Villamayor de Santiago

The church bell tolls at 21:00 and the only other sound is a tractor idling outside the Multiserv. In Villamayor de Santiago, population 2,400, this passes for the evening rush hour. Most foreigners race past the turn-off on the CM-310, hell-bent on Cuenca or the Mediterranean, yet 25 minutes after leaving the motorway you can be sitting under a plane tree in Plaza Mayor with a caña that costs €1.40 and a view uninterrupted by souvenir stalls.

Altitude 776 m on the southern edge of the Meseta means the air is thin enough to sharpen the light but not so high that ears pop. The village sits in a shallow cereal bowl: wheat, barley and the occasional stripe of vines that supply the local La Mancha co-op. Summer afternoons hit 35 °C, yet after sunset the thermometer drops 15 degrees; bring a fleece even in July because the stone houses store coolness like a larder.

There is no railway, no ring-road hotel, no interpretive centre. What you get instead is a working grid of whitewashed houses, their wooden doors painted the traditional ox-blood red, and a fifteen-minute walk from one end of town to the other that takes forty because every neighbour wants a word. Tourism here is measured in handfuls: five TripAdvisor reviews, one rural hostel, two bars that open when the owners feel like it. That is precisely the appeal for drivers who have spent the morning jostling on the A-3 and suddenly find themselves alone on a single-track road where larks outnumber cars.

A church, a square and a bar that still roasts its own coffee

The parish church of Nuestra Señora de la Antigua anchors the old centre. Built in dressed granite between the 15th and 18th centuries, it looks heavier than it is; step inside and the nave lifts into a surprisingly delicate rib-vaulted roof. Restoration work finished in 2019, paid for partly by the EU and partly by village bingo nights. Opening times are whatever the sacristan feels like, usually 10:00-12:00, but ring the side-door bell and someone’s aunt will appear with a key and a request for a €1 donation towards new hymn books.

From the church porch you can see the entire social ecosystem. To the left, the ayuntamiento flies a flag that has faded from crimson to coral. Opposite, Bar Plaza occupies a corner with marble tables that have been there since 1962; the owner, Jesús, still roasts coffee beans in a 10 kg drum behind the kitchen. Order a café solo and he’ll slide a complimentary churro across the counter on Sunday mornings while the radio broadcasts mass from the neighbouring village because the local priest is shared between four parishes.

Walk two blocks north and the streets dissolve into agricultural tracks. This is where Villamayor stops pretending to be anything other than a grain depot with a place to sleep. Concrete silos loom beside stork nests, and the smell changes from incense and coffee to warm straw and diesel. Keep going and you reach the municipal swimming pool, open July to August, entry €2, staffed by a lifeguard who doubles as the village electrician.

Flat roads, big skies and lamb that tastes of thyme

The surrounding landscape is not dramatic; it is patient. Flat lanes lined with poplars form a grid you can follow on a bike borrowed from the hostel for €10 a day. Distances look trivial on the map—seven kilometres to the ruined Ermita de la Soledad—yet the horizon plays tricks, so the chapel bell tower hovers like a mirage for twenty minutes before you reach it. Take water; there is no bar until you roll back into town.

Serious walkers can join the PR-CU 71 footpath that links Villamayor with the salt lagoons at El Hito, 18 km east. Flamingos pass through in April and October, but even on an ordinary Tuesday you will see kestrels, hoopoes and the occasional Iberian hare lolloping across the track like a cartoon. The route is way-marked, though paint fades under the high sun; download the GPX before you set off because phone signal dies after the first irrigation channel.

Food when you return is uncompromisingly local. Gazpacho manchego arrives as a clay bowl of gamey broth thickened with flatbread, not the chilled tomato soup confused Brits expect. Cordero a la miel—lamb shoulder braised with rosemary honey—falls off the bone and tastes of the thyme the sheep grazed on. A half-litre jarra of house tinto is soft enough to drink without food, costs €3.80, and will have you humming down the empty streets afterwards.

September fiestas and winter pig days

Visit in early September and you will collide with the fiestas de la Virgen de la Antigua. The programme is printed on a single A4 sheet taped to the church door: Saturday evening foam party in the polideportivo, Sunday morning procession with the statue carried by women who have walked barefoot since childhood, Monday evening paella for 400 cooked in a pan the size of a satellite dish. Tourist infrastructure extends to a row of portable loos and a beer tent run by the local youth association; bring cash because the card machine relies on a dongle that loses signal whenever someone uploads a video.

January brings the matanza weekend, when families slaughter a pig they have fattened all year. Invitations are not advertised; if the hostel owner likes you, he might ask whether you want to watch chorizo being stuffed at 07:00 the next day. Vegetarians should politely decline; everyone else will be given a slice of fresh morcilla and a glass of anís to keep the cold out. Temperatures can touch –5 °C at night, so rural cottages light their wood burners and the smell of oak smoke drifts across roofs like incense.

How to do it (and when not to)

The simplest route is the weekday ALSA coach from Madrid’s Estación Sur: departs 15:00, arrives 17:15, single fare €12. By car, leave the A-3 at Tarancón, fill the tank and hit a cash machine because the village ATM often runs dry by Friday. Accommodation is limited to six rooms above the rural hostel and two self-catering houses on the edge of town; book ahead even in low season or you will be driving another 40 km to Cuenca.

Come in spring if you want green wheat and migrating storks, or mid-October for the saffron harvest in neighbouring Saelices. August is scorching and half the shops shut; December can be bleak when the wind whistles across the plateau. Sunday lunchtime is the liveliest moment—arrive before 13:30 or queue for a table while the regulars debate last night’s football over drained cañas.

Leave before dusk and the village shrinks in the rear-view mirror until only the church tower and the grain silos remain, silhouetted against a sky the colour of quince jelly. There are no souvenir shops, no fridge magnets, no hashtag moments. Instead you carry away the taste of honeyed lamb, the faint diesel note of a tractor that passed at dawn, and the memory of a square where time is still measured by bells, not notifications.