La Roda

The sun drops like a copper coin behind wheat stubble, and suddenly every cloud has a gilt edge. You are 710 metres above sea level on the Albacete plain, 55 minutes' drive from Alicante airport, yet the evening air carries a sharpness that makes British visitors reach for the fleece they thought they'd never need in July. This is La Roda, a working market town that motorway signs treat as a blur on the A-31, but which rewards anyone who bothers to take the turning.

A horizon that teaches you distance

Flat is the dominant texture. Roads run ruler-straight to vanishing points; pylons stride across ochre fields like iron giants. The absence of hills means the sky owns two-thirds of every view, and locals plan their day around its moods. Morning can be glass-clear, afternoon a kiln, dusk a water-colour wash. Bring sunglasses and a light jacket in the same rucksack—temperature swings of 15 °C between noon and night are normal.

Because the land is open, walking here feels less like hiking and more like trespassing on an Ordnance Survey map. A signed circuit, the Ruta de la Campiña, leaves from the football ground, follows farm tracks for 8 km and returns via an irrigation canal where bee-eaters perch on the concrete. There is no climb worthy of the name, yet the scale is exhilarating: larks overhead, hares rocketing from vines, the smell of fennel crushed under boot. Start at 18:00 in summer and you will meet half the town power-walking off their lunch.

Cyclists appreciate the same lack of gradient. Mountain bikes are overkill; a hybrid with puncture-proof tyres is ideal for the rough caminos that link hamlets such as El Aceituno or Los Llanos. Carry water—shade is scarce and cafés are spaced every 10 km at best.

Stone, storks and the smell of cumin

The centre is compact enough to cross in fifteen minutes, but give it an hour. Begin at Plaza de España where the Renaissance church of El Salvador squats like a sandstone fortress. Its tower houses a stork nest the size of a Mini; the birds clatter like wooden spoons when mass ends and doors swing open. Inside, the retablo glitters with gilt paint that has been refreshed so often it looks almost Venetian—proof that this town never accepted the austere label Castilla-La Mancha usually gets.

Side streets reveal merchant houses from the 1920s with glazed tiles and wrought-iron balconies painted the colour of pistachio ice cream. Number 14 on Calle Mayor still has the original grain chute; if the wooden doors are ajar you can peer into a courtyard where a diesel-powered flour mill sits rusting beside a pomegranate tree. Nobody will shoo you away, though English is scarce. A smiled "¿Puedo mirar?" works wonders.

Tuesday changes the tempo. Market stalls muscle into the main road from 08:30: hawkers from Murcia shout prices for melons, while two brothers from Segovia sell knives sharp enough to slice tissue paper in mid-air. Queso Manchego curado—aged six months, nutty rather than salty—costs €14 a kilo, roughly half the Waitrose price. Bring cash; the card reader's battery invariably dies just as you reach the front.

What lands on the table

Gastronomy in La Roda is built for people who spend dawn threshing and dusk pruning. Lunch is a three-course commitment, and portions arrive on platters that could double as satellite dishes. The local star is gazpacho manchego, a winter stew of hare or partridge thickened with flatbread; it has zero relation to the chilled Andalusian soup Brits expect. Order it at Casa Ramón (Calle San Roque 9) and the waiter will bring a copper pan plus a spoon big enough to row with. Vegetarians can retreat to pisto manchego—slow-cooked peppers, aubergine and tomato topped with a fried egg—though you may still be offered a slice of morcilla out of politeness.

Sweet teeth do better. Miguelitos are the town's claim to laminated fame: rectangles of puff pastry injected with custard cream, dusted with icing sugar and sold warm from 10:00 at Pastelería Nuria. Buy four for €3 and the assistant slips in an extra "for the road" without being asked. If you visit during Easter, look for flores manchegas, brittle fried dough shaped like daisies and glazed with honey. They survive the flight home in hand luggage—provided you don't eat them on the coach to Alicante.

When the church bells ring twice

Festivals here are family reunions that outsiders can gate-crash politely. Fiestas de los Santos Mártires (around 20 August) turn the fairground into a thudding disco until 05:00, yet the daytime programme is endearingly old-fashioned: sack races, a greasy-pole contest for teenagers, and a parade where neighbours dress as Roman centurions with cardboard armour sprayed gold. Beer is €2 a caña, but note that food stalls close at midnight sharp—Spanish bureaucracy has a bedtime.

Semana Santa is quieter. On Good Friday the silence is broken only by drumbeats accompanying two Baroque floats that wobble through narrow streets on the shoulders of men in Ku-Klux-Klan-style hoods (less sinister in context, though disconcerting at first). The procession starts at 21:00; arrive 40 minutes early if you want a spot against the barrier, or watch from Bar Alhambra whose terrace becomes an informal grandstand.

Getting stuck, or choosing to stay

La Roda refuses to make itself effortless. The tourist office keeps odd hours—sometimes Tuesday to Thursday, sometimes only when the volunteer isn't picking grapes. English menus are rare, though waiters will march you to the kitchen display if your Spanish stalls at "pollo". Shops lock up from 14:00 to 17:00, so if you need paracetamol you'll be negotiating with a pharmacist who believes gestures are contagious.

Evenings can feel deserted. Young locals migrate to Murcia or Valencia for university; those who remain socialise in private houses rather than bars. After 23:00 the main sound is the hum of refrigerators in closed cafés. Nightlife seekers should book a hotel with a terrace and a bottle of local white (Blanco de La Mancha, €5 in the supermarket, tastes like Sauvignon Blanc on a budget).

Yet the town rewards patience. On my second night the sky performed a lightning storm so distant the thunder never arrived—just pink flashes on the horizon like faulty neon. A farmer parked his tractor beside me, offered a swig of anise from a metal flask, and explained that such storms "remind the soil who's boss". No gift-shop souvenir could match that.

Drive back to the motorway at dawn and the silhouettes of grain silos merge with the sunrise. You leave with cheese wrapped in newspaper, a sugar crust on your fingers, and the realisation that Castilla-La Mancha isn't a windmill fantasy—it's a plateau where people measure distance in sky and flavour in cumin. Next time the sat-nav says "La Roda 2 km", take the exit. Just pack a fleece and an appetite the size of Leicestershire.