Ledaña

The church bell strikes midday and Ledana’s single bakery locks its door. By 12.07 the plaza is empty again, leaving only the smell of anise and the certainty that nothing in this village was designed for passing trade. That is the first thing a visitor notices: the place works to its own clock, and the clock was set long before smartphones.

At 720 m above sea level, the town sits on a mild rise in the middle of La Manchuela, the buffer zone between the high plateau of Castilla-La Mancha and the coastal plains of Valencia. The altitude is too modest to promise mountain views, yet high enough to shave three or four degrees off the furnace temperatures that bake the provincial capital, Cuenca, every July. In practice this means you can walk the vineyard tracks at nine in the morning without wilting, something the local farmers insist on when they greet you with the phrase “aquí se respira” – you can breathe here.

What passes for a skyline

Ledana’s horizon is ruler-straight in every direction, broken only by the tower of the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción. The church was begun in the 16th century, patched after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, and given a new roof in 1987 when a hailstorm punched holes through the old one. The result is a frank hybrid: Gothic base, baroque belfry, steel staircase to the bell chamber. Inside, the paintwork is tobacco-brown and custard-cream, the colour scheme every Spanish village uses the moment it can afford a single industrial repaint. You do not come for art-historical frissons; you come because the side door is open and someone has left the lights on.

Around the building the streets keep to a grid laid out after the Reconquista, wide enough for two mules and a cart. House fronts are whitewashed every spring, the limestone wash mixed with a squeeze of local pigment that gives the walls a faint apricot blush by August. Modern aluminium shutters sit beside 200-year-old timber doors; satellite dishes bloom on terracotta roofs like metallic fungi. The mixture is honest – people upgrade when the roof leaks, not when a style magazine drops by.

The economics of quiet

Roughly 1,563 inhabitants remain on the padron, though you will be lucky to see 40 at once. Many hold second jobs in Motilla del Palancar or even Valencia, commuting west–east along the N-420. That road, a fast dual-carriageway, skirts the village edge and explains why Ledana still has a butcher, a pharmacy and a bar that can produce a three-course lunch for €11. Passing traffic keeps the petrol station alive; the village itself keeps the rest.

Outsiders usually arrive because they have read, somewhere, that La Manchuela is “the next undiscovered wine region”. The claim is half true. Since 2000 a cluster of small bodegas has swapped bulk grapes for bottled reds, and the district now holds the Vino de la Tierra stamp. None of the wineries are actually inside Ledana, but three lie within ten minutes’ drive: Bodegas Verum in Tomelloso, Casa Caño in La Gineta, and the cooperative at El Provencio. The tourist office – a room annexed to the town hall – will telephone ahead and book a tasting, provided you ring the bell before 2 p.m. Expect tempranillo with a chalky edge, the result of limestone soils that once fooled farmers into thinking olives would never grow here. The olives arrived anyway.

Calendar of return tickets

If you want the village at full volume, turn up on 15 August. The fiesta mayor drags back anyone who ever left, swelling numbers to perhaps 3,000. Brass bands march at noon, children’s races clog the main street, and at 3 a.m. the plaza becomes an open-air disco with €2 plastic cups of lager. Two nights later the Virgen de la Asunción is carried around the streets, her platform so heavy it needs 30 bearers and still scrapes the tarmac. Fireworks follow, launched from the football pitch because the surrounding fields are too dry to risk sparks.

January brings the blessing of the animals on San Antón. Owners parade dogs, donkeys, pet goats and the occasional tractor, receiving a sprinkle of holy water and a handful of straw for luck. The ceremony lasts 20 minutes, after which everyone retreats to the bar for anise and coffee. British visitors sometimes expect pageantry; what they get is a working ritual that smells slightly of damp fur.

Walking without drama

The countryside around Ledana is made for mileage rather than drama. A lattice of farm tracks, graded sand and gravel, radiates for kilometres between vineyards and wheat plots. Marking is minimal – the occasional paint splash on a fence post – but the terrain is so open it is hard to get lost. A gentle circuit east to the hamlet of Casas de Haro and back is 8 km, gaining only 90 m of height. Spring brings calendula and poppies along the verges; September smells of crushed grapes and diesel from the harvest trucks. Take water: there are no cafés between settlements and shade is confined to the odd olive grove.

Mountain bikers use the same web of tracks. A rental shop exists, in theory, at the petrol station, though stock is limited to three adult hybrids and a child’s bike with a squeaky brake. Better to bring your own and regard the village as a free base camp. Nights are silent enough to hear the cooling tick of steel frames outside the hotel door.

Where to sleep, what to eat

Accommodation is thin. Hostal El Paraíso has eight rooms above the bar, all ensuite, €45 a night including breakfast (toast, olive oil, tomato, coffee). Sheets are Line 1 IKEA, towels are large, and the Wi-Fi password is written on a blackboard in the corridor. Book by telephone; the owner does not trust online platforms and will hold the room only until 8 p.m.

Evening meals are served downstairs or across the road at La Casa de Paco. The menu changes according to what the distributor delivers, but constants include gazpacho manchego (a game-and-flatbread stew, nothing to do with the cold Andalusian soup), morteruelo (pork-liver pâté sharpened with clove), and migas (fried breadcrumbs with garlic and scraps of bacon). Vegetarians can have eggs, salad, or both. House wine comes in a 50 cl carafe and tastes better after the second glass.

Getting here, getting away

Cuenca’s AVE station is 110 km west; from there a twice-daily regional bus trundles to Ledana in just under two hours. A hire car is faster: take the A-40, swing onto the N-420 towards Albacete, and exit at kilometre 678. The slip road deposits you opposite the bakery. Parking is free and unlimited; the only congestion occurs during fiesta week when every verge becomes a makeside campsite.

Leave time for a final stop at the panadería when it reopens at 5 p.m. The almond biscuits sell out fast, bought by locals who have spent the afternoon sleeping off lunch. Buy an extra bag for the return journey – the biscuits survive the two-hour drive to Madrid airport without crumbling, a small victory for a village that was never trying to impress you in the first place.