Yepes

The bells of San Benito Abad start at seven, rolling across cereal fields that stretch flat as an ironed sheet until the sky folds them up at the horizon. From the top of its 16th-century tower you can watch the sound travel: first the stone rooftops of Yepes shiver, then the hamlets of Ocaña plateau blink awake, and finally the tractors cough into life somewhere beyond the A-4 motorway. Few British travellers make it to this altitude—680 m above sea level, high enough for January frost to silver the thistle—but those who do arrive almost always mutter the same thing: “Didn’t expect a cathedral here.”

A Town That Outgrew Its Boots

San Benito Abad is not technically a cathedral, yet its sandstone bulk dominates Plaza Mayor like a London parish church dropped by mistake into a market town of 5,000 souls. Inside, the nave is wide enough to swing three processional banners abreast; the retablo glitters with gilt angels commissioned at the height of the Indies trade. The building makes sense only when you learn that Yepes once styled itself a miniature bishopric, bank-rolled by Don Álvaro de Luna, the 15th-century constable who could (and did) change Castilian politics with a nod. Heraldic shields still poke from crumbling manor walls—griffins, towers, swords—though today they prop up satellite dishes and the occasional stork’s nest.

Wander south-east from the plaza and the streets shrink into medieval proportion: single-file alleys where a SEAT Toledo fills the width and passengers must fold mirrors to squeeze through. Here the stone glows ochre rather than Andalusian white; midday photographs bleach it to biscuit, so come at 18:00 when the walls turn honey and swifts stitch the gap between eaves and clouds. You will meet more cats than people; most residents have retreated indoors for the sobremesa, and the only shop still open is the ultramarinos on Calle de Cervantes, where a euro buys a paper cone of cracked olives and the owner insists on practising the English he learned picking strawberries in Kent.

Bread, Cheese and the Blessing of Animals

Yepes does not do delicate tapas. Portions are built for labourers who once ploughed these plateaux on horseback. Order carcamusas—a slow-cooked pork and pea stew—in the Restaurant Góngora and the bowl arrives big enough to bathe a toddler; ask for it “sin picante” if you prefer warmth to fire. The local rosado, made by Dominio de Yepes cooperative, drinks like liquid summer: strawberry on the nose, dry enough for roast lamb, soft enough for palates raised on Provence. For cheese, request semi-curado Manchego; the fully-cured version can taste like a barn floor to the uninitiated, whereas six months ageing gives butter and hazelnut without the sheepish punch.

Mid-January brings the Fiesta de San Antón. Residents lead pets—spaniels, parakeets, the occasional Shetland pony—to the church gates for a sprinkle of holy water and a slice of blessed loaf. British visitors often stumble on the ceremony by accident, charmed and slightly baffled. If you object to incense in your dog’s fur, keep to the ring-road before 11 a.m.; afterwards, everyone piles into the Casa de Cultura for chocolate con churros at 50 c a cup, children still clutching guinea pigs wrapped in blankets like furry infants.

Walking the Lanes of Don Quixote—Without the Windmills

Yepes sits on the Mesa de Ocaña, a raised breadboard of land that keeps horizons honest. The tourist office (open Tuesday–Friday, 10–14 h) hands out a free leaflet titled “Caminos de Yepes” outlining three circular routes:

• Ruta de los Cercados (7 km, 2 h) skirts vineyards and the ruins of Luna’s fortified palace—little more than a mossy cornerstone now, but skylarks throw songs off the breeze and you’ll rarely meet another boot.
• Ruta de la Vega (11 km) drops to the Algodor river, a silver thread in April that dries to cracked mud by July; take water, there is no bar until you climb back.
• Ruta de los Montes (15 km) pushes east into low holm-oak hills where wild thyme smells like English allotment thyme on steroids.

Paths are wide farm tracks; stout trainers suffice unless you insist on Gore-Tex. Summer walkers should start at dawn—by 13:00 the thermometer can nudge 38 °C and shade is counted in single trees. Winter, on the other hand, surprises: night frost can glaze windscreens in October, yet midday sun is T-shirt warm. Snow arrives perhaps one day a year, just long enough for children to scrape together a 30-cm snowman before it melts.

Arriving, Sleeping, Escaping

Madrid-Barajas to Yepes is 76 km of motorway: exit the A-4 at junction 52, fork right on the CM-4005 and the tower pops into view like a exclamation mark. Car hire is easiest; there is no direct bus from the UK and the rail option involves a high-speed dash to Toledo then a €45 taxi. Park on the perimeter road—C/ de Cimballa, free all day—and walk in; the old quarter’s lanes were designed for mules, not Vauxhall Astras.

If you want to sleep inside the walls, the choice is essentially one: Hotel-Restaurante Yepes, 17 rooms above the Góngora dining room, lift smells faintly of garlic, Wi-Fi reliable, doubles from €65 with breakfast. English is spoken, though reception switches to Spanish once the night porter arrives. Quieter lies Casa Rural La Marihuela, three kilometres out among almond groves, salt-water pool, British–Spanish owners who leave scones on the sideboard and can advise which walking trails are boggy after rain. Most foreigners, however, base themselves in monumental Toledo—25 minutes by car—returning to Yepes for an hour of bell-tower calm before the motorway drags them back to airport queues.

Sunday Bells and Monday Silence

Come on a Sunday morning and three coaches from Coslada will already be lined up, passengers filing into the Colegiata with selfie sticks at the ready. By 13:30 they have gone, bellies full of cordero asado, leaving the plaza to pigeons and the lone bar that stays open until the priest finishes lunch. Monday reverts to whisper-level: shops lower shutters, even the bakery shuts at 14 h, and the village feels suspended—half way between the bustle of its ducal past and the modern pull of Madrid, visible only as a smudge of headlights on the far motorway after dark.

Yepes will never shout for attention. It offers instead a measured Castilian greeting: a tower visible from miles away, food that assumes you have worked the fields, and the certainty that when the bells ring again you will hear them long before you see another soul. Turn up expecting nightlife and you will be asleep by half-ten; arrive prepared to match its slower pulse and you might leave wondering why more British maps leave the space blank.