Ontígola

The petrol station opens at 06:30 and by 07:00 the queue already stretches onto the CM-400. Lorry drivers, office workers and airport-shift staff shuffle forward, buying coffee in paper cups and foil-wrapped bocadillos that steam the windscreen. This is Ontígola’s morning ritual: a commuter pit-stop 55 minutes south of Madrid where the pumps are cheaper than the capital and the attendant still says “buen viaje” as you pull away. Stay longer than it takes to refuel, though, and the village begins to explain why half its 5,000 residents prefer the slow lane of La Mancha to the city’s ring road.

The Reservoir that Belongs to Someone Else

Two minutes east of the petrol fumes sits the Mar de Ontígola, a 15-hectare sheet of water ordered by Felipe II in 1562 to keep the Royal Gardens of Aranjuez irrigated and photogenic. The brick aqueduct that fed it once marched all the way to town; today only a single arch remains, wedged between the N-400 roundabout and a warehouse selling tractor parts. Park on the verge before 10 a.m. (after that the delivery lorries claim every inch) and you can walk the dirt track that skirts the lagoon. Herons flap off the reeds, coots skid across the surface and, if the wind drops, you’ll hear the mechanical click of a cyclist’s freewheel on the nearby camino. There are no ticket booths, no interpretation boards, just a hide made from pallets where local schoolkids leave half-finished bird lists Blu-tacked to the wall. Bring binoculars in April or October; the rest of the year the water shrinks and the storks commute elsewhere.

One High Street, Three Bars, No Cathedral

Ontígola’s centre is a 400-metre stripe of 1960s brick and older plaster painted the colour of dry earth. The pharmacy still shuts for siesta, the cash machine charges €1.75 and the traffic lights flash amber after midnight because everyone knows everyone else’s business anyway. Mid-morning, pensioners occupy the benches outside the late-Renaissance church of Nuestra Señora de la Natividad, swapping newspapers and keeping an eye on the primary-school playground opposite. The church door is usually open; inside, the nave smells of beeswax and floor disinfectant, and a single fluorescent tube illuminates a 17th-century panel of the Virgin that lost most of its gilt during the Civil War. Climb the tower on a festival day and you can see the cereal plateau rolling south until it meets the faint blue line of the Montes de Toledo; look north and the A-4 is a silver ribbon carrying freight to the capital.

Lunch at the Traffic Lights

Foreign number plates normally park outside Restaurante la Frontera, 50 m from the lights, where the entrecôte comes thick enough to need a steak knife that actually cuts. Half-bottles of Rioja are uncorked without ceremony and the waiter will grill a plain chicken breast for children who stare suspiciously at gachas manchegas. If the budget is tighter, Mesón Las Cueves offers a weekday menú del día for €14: lentil soup, tortilla the size of a tractor hubcap, and a slab of flan that wobbles like the table leg. Finish with churros at Cafetería Avenida on Saturday morning; ask for sugar because the chocolate is bitter enough to make a Londoner wince. English menus exist but the waitress switches to Spanish the moment you mispronounce “postre”.

Flat Roads, Sharp Sun

The village sits at 602 m on the Mesa de Ocaña, which simply means the land is flat enough to see tomorrow’s weather today. A lattice of farm tracks links Ontígola to its neighbours—Belmonte, Ciruelos, human-scale names that appear on signposts and nowhere else. Cyclists like the gravel lanes that skirt the reservoir; gradients are negligible, the tarmac ends quickly and the only hazard is the sun. From May to September it drills through SPF 30 by lunchtime; start early or risk a scarlet stripe between glove and jersey sleeve. In January the wind snaps across the plain and the same roads turn into corridors of dust that coat your teeth. There are no bike shops—puncture repairs happen at the petrol station where the mechanic keeps a box of second-hand inner tubes under the counter.

Festivals that Finish before the Metro Home

San Benito, 11 July, is the date circled on kitchen calendars. The fairground occupies the polideportivo car park, the brass band plays Suspiros de España slightly off-key and teenagers judge each other’s Instagram stories against the flashing lights of a dodgem ride. At midnight the mayor hands out slices of pan de fiesta—sweet bread flavoured with anise that tastes like liquid liquorice if you weren’t raised on it. The Romería in September is smaller: a procession of tractors, a velvet-robed Virgin and paper flowers that wilt in the heat as the crowd walks three kilometres to the hermitage and back. If you’re driving back to Madrid afterwards, leave before the cuadrilla starts passing around orujo; the Guardia Civil set up a checkpoint on the A-4 exit and politeness evaporates faster than the alcohol on your breath.

Getting Stuck, Getting Out

There is no railway station; the nearest RENFE is 10 km away in Aranjuez, reached by a bus that runs four times a day and not at all on Sunday. Taxis from Aranjuez cost €18 before 22:00, €25 after—about the same as the excess on a hire car if you forget to refuel before Madrid airport. Accommodation is limited to two guesthouses above the bars; rooms are clean, wi-fi is patchy and the church bell rings every quarter hour. Most visitors treat Ontígola as a pause between Toledo’s sword shops and Aranjuez’s Royal Palace: an hour for coffee, a stroll round the lagoon, a photograph of the aqueduct arch. Stay longer and the village reveals its bargain: a place where the bread is baked at 05:00, the night sky still shows Orion and the commute home is measured in tractors, not junctions. Just remember to fill the tank before the queue forms.