Alarcón

From the A-3 motorway you turn east for twenty minutes and climb. Olive groves give way to thyme-scented scrub, then to bare rock. Suddenly the road corkscrews above a gorge and a stone sentinel appears: walls the colour of burnt caramel, a single tower punched against the sky, the whole village balanced on a knife-edge ridge. Sat-nav gives up. Phone signal wavers. You have reached Alarcón, population 159, altitude 830 m, and the twenty-first century feels negotiable.

The first thing to master is the wind. Even in June it barrels up the Júcar canyon, rattles the battlements and whips tablecloths off the café terrace. Locals claim it keeps the air twenty per cent cooler than the plain below, which explains why Cuenca families keep second homes here and why the afternoon siesta is non-negotiable. In January the same wind delivers snow that can seal the single access road for a day; chains are advised, and the Parador occasionally closes. Summer visitors, meanwhile, should budget for factor 30 and a litre of water per person if they plan to walk the gorge path.

A Fortress That Refuses to Retire

The castle is the obvious magnet. Built by the Moors in the eighth century, rebuilt by the Knights of Santiago in the twelfth, it now houses one of Spain’s smallest state-run paradores: fourteen rooms, no lift, Wi-Fi that remembers the dial-up era. A double room starts at €165, breakfast included, but weekends sell out six months ahead; mid-week in February you might wing it with a fortnight’s notice. Non-residents may still poke around the outer ward, the Romanesque chapel and the battlements where the river loops 100 m below. The best camera angle is from the north-east tower at 09:15 when the sun lifts the mist out of the canyon and the stone turns briefly pink.

Downslope, the medieval walls still encircle every house, garden and alley. You can walk perhaps half the original adarve; some stretches end in private patios where washing flaps above rosemary bushes. The five gates survive, renamed over centuries—Puerta del Bodegón, Puerta del Río—each one a choke point designed for hot oil rather than hire cars. Park in the free tarmac yard outside the Portillo de San Juan; the streets inside are barely wider than a donkey and residents guard their gateposts fiercely.

Two Churches and a Plaza That Breathes

Santo Domingo de Silos, begun 1530, stands square above the cliff edge. Its Renaissance tower is open most mornings for €2 (exact coins only; no cards). The climb is 107 steps, steel ladders, not suitable for vertigo sufferers, but the reward is a 360-degree roofscape of ochre tiles and black vultures gliding at eye level. Across the plaza, Santa María has the heavier buttresses and a portal that mixes late-Gothic flamboyance with early plateresque. Both churches close 14:00–16:30 even in August; plan accordingly or you will be left photographing closed doors.

The Plaza del Infante Don Juan Manuel is the size of a Winchester back garden, irregularly paved, shaded by a single judas tree. House façades carry coats of arms chipped by centuries of hail; one shows a boar pierced by an arrow, another the five wounds of Christ. The only bar with outdoor tables opens onto this space. Order a caña (€1.40) and a plate of local queso manchego and you have essentially hired a town-centre seat for the afternoon. English is not spoken; pointing works.

River Light and Griffon Vultures

A signed footpath drops from the Postigo de la Traición to the Júcar in twenty minutes. The gradient is 1:4 and the surface loose limestone—trainers suffice, but open-toed sandals do not. At water level the temperature rises five degrees and the cliffs funnel sound so that every oarsman’s shout echoes like a cathedral. Griffon vultures nest here year-round; if you sit quietly they cruise overhead, wingspan the length of a London bus. The full circuit back to the car park takes ninety minutes and crosses an iron bridge built for mules in 1897. After heavy rain the path can disappear; check at the ayuntamiento window first.

Anglers head three kilometres downstream to the Alarcón reservoir, one of Spain’s largest, where black bass and pike oblige if you cast from the eastern shore near the ruined mill. A day licence costs €15 from the petrol station inVillaconejos de Trabaque—bring passport and cash, still no cards.

What to Eat and When to Panic

Gastronomy is stubbornly provincial. Gazpacho manchego arrives as a stew of game (usually rabbit) on unleavened bread, not the chilled tomato soup Britons expect. Morteruelo, a pâté of pork liver and partridge, is thick enough to grout tiles; order the child-size tapa unless you are ravenous. Vegetarians get pisto—Spain’s ratatouille—often crowned with a fried egg. The castle restaurant will swap chips for vegetables if you ask before 21:00, after which the kitchen refuses alterations with medieval firmness.

There is no supermarket inside the walls, no cash machine, and the single grocery on Calle de la Trinidad keeps erratic hours. Fill the tank and draw euros in Motilla del Palancar, 19 km back towards the motorway. Credit cards are refused by both village bars and the modest art centre housed in the old granary; bring notes and pockets of change.

Leaving the Rock

Most visitors stay two hours, photograph the gorge and leave. That suffices for the checklist, yet the village repays a slower rhythm: the way shadows fill the plaza at six, how the bells count the quarters even when no one is watching, the scent of charcoal drifting from a chimney in October. Stay for one slow meal or overnight in the keep, and Alarcón stops being a waypoint and becomes a reference point—somewhere to remember when the M25 is jammed and the rain horizontal.

Drive back down the access road just before dusk. In the rear-view mirror the walls glow like embers, then vanish as the bend drops. Within five minutes you rejoin radio reception, scrolling news, the twenty-first century reasserting itself. The ridge recedes, but the wind-buffeted hush inside the fortress lingers longer than expected, an 830-metre-high pocket of silence you can still hear a week later in London.