Recas

The thermometer outside the petrol station reads 38 °C at 2 pm, yet the air above the vines shimmers as if someone has switched on a giant hair-dryer. Welcome to Recas, a grid-pattern town parked on a wind-whipped plateau 571 m above sea level, halfway between Madrid and Toledo. There is no castle on a crag, no ravine, no Instagram viewpoint—just horizon, cereal stubble and rows of tempranillo that run right up to the back gardens. For British drivers who have spent the morning crawling round the M40, the first gulp of this sky-wide landscape feels like someone has opened the car windows on the A1 north of Peterborough—only warmer, and with better lunch.

A Working Town, Not a Museum

Recas makes its living from wine, not from visitors. The cooperative, Bodegas Cristo de la Vega, is a 40,000-m² stainless-steel city on the western bypass; tanker lorries come and go more frequently than taxis. Inside, the scale is closer to a brewery: computer panels, spotless floors, a gift shop that looks unused. Tours (€12, English available) run twice daily but you must email the day before—staffing is thin and they would rather be bottling than babysitting. The upside is that when you do get in you taste three vintages at kitchen-table proximity with the enologist, not in a velvet salon.

The centre is a rectangle of cream-rendered houses and geranium balconies laid out in the 1880s after a phylloxera wipe-out. The only traffic jam is caused by a delivery van blocking Calle Real while the driver chats to the butcher. Park anywhere on the main square—parking is still free, a novelty after Toledo’s €2-per-hour meters—and you are three minutes from everything: the 16th-century parish church (open 10–12, locked tight afterwards), the only cash machine (inside the Dia supermarket, often out of ten-euro notes) and two restaurants that still serve a three-course menú del día for €14.

What the Plateau Does to Lunch

Altitude here is just high enough to sharpen appetites. At midday the wind swings round to the north-west, dragging the smell of lamb and rosemary across the square from Asador La Sagra. Order the cordero asado for two: half a shoulder slow-cooked until the fat turns into a crunchy, bronzed blanket, served with hand-cut chips that taste of olive rather than fryer oil. Vegetarians get pisto manchego, a thick ratatouille crowned with a fried egg—comfort food for anyone who misses allotment vegetables in February. The local white, bottled under the La Mancha DO, is verdejo-based, closer to a Loire sauvignon than the oaky reds foreigners expect from Spain; ask for it muy frío and they will bring the bottle in an ice bucket, no raised eyebrows.

Kitchens shut by 4.30 pm. Turn up at five and you will be offered crisps and a lukewarm caña while the staff mop around your shoes. Evening service is patchy outside July–August; phone ahead if you are staying overnight or you will end up with supermarket tortilla in your hotel room.

Flat Trails, Big Sky

Recas sits on a gentle swell of la Sagra, a wheat ocean that runs 40 km north to the Guadalquivir ridge. The terrain is ideal for cyclists who like mileage without hills: head east on the CV-410 and you can spin to Toledo cathedral in 70 minutes, car-free for 80 % of the route. Walkers should follow the signed 8 km loop that starts behind the cemetery, skirting vineyard lanes and cortijos whose white walls reflect the sun like mirrors. You will meet tractors, not trekkers; carry water—there is no café until you are back at the square. In May the verges turn lime-green with wild fennel; by late July the same plants are brittle enough to start a bushfire, and the ayuntamiento bans smoking on all paths.

Winter is surprisingly sharp. At 570 m frosts can linger until 10 am; the vines are trimmed back to knuckles and the landscape feels Lincolnshire-flat under a pewter sky. The cooperative keeps heating low to save money—tastings are done in coats. On the plus side hotels drop their rates by 30 % and Toledo’s day-trippers evaporate.

Toledo on the Doorstep, Without the Tour Buses

The A-42 motorway slip road is four minutes from the church, which means you can breakfast on churros in Recas, be inside Toledo’s El Greco museum by 10.15 am, and still back in time for a 2 pm lamb lunch. The city’s Parador has views and prices to match; a smarter move is to park in the Los Cigarrales public car park (€1.80 all day) and ride the urban lift up to the old town—saves 25 minutes of calf-burning cobbles. Return mid-afternoon when coaches are herding cruisers back to Cádiz and you will have the cathedral cloisters almost to yourself.

When to Drop In, When to Drive On

Come between mid-April and mid-June and you hit the plateau at its most benign: daytime 24 °C, night-time 10 °C, vines fuzzing with new leaves. September is harvest season; the cooperative sometimes lets visitors stomp a small tub of grapes, but only if you book the week before. August is brutally hot—thermometers hit 42 °C—and the town’s only hotel has no pool. British half-term October works too, but bring a fleece; once the sun drops behind the polígono industrial units the temperature free-falls ten degrees in half an hour.

Public transport exists—one daily bus from Toledo at 1 pm, back at 7 am next day—but the timetable is useless for day-trippers. A taxi from Toledo station costs €35 each way; suddenly the hire car at Madrid airport (55 min door-to-door on the A-42) looks cheap.

The Honest Verdict

Recas will never make the front page of a Spanish brochure. It has no alcázar, no gorge, no flamenco tablaos. What it does offer is a slice of workaday Castile where wine is pumped rather than posed, lunch is still the main event, and the sky is big enough to reset any city-squeezed brain. Treat it as a pit-stop with benefits: fill the tank, stretch the legs, eat lamb that tastes of something, and be in Toledo for tea-time—calmer, fuller, and with change from a twenty.