Lucillos

The church bell strikes seven and the village answers. Windows open, a tractor coughs into life, and the smell of strong coffee drifts across Plaza de España. In Lucillos, population 597, this is the morning shift change – not between factory workers, but between neighbours who’ve risen with the grain fields that circle the town like a moat of ochre and silver.

Five hundred metres above sea level on the Toledo plain, the place sits high enough for the air to carry a snap in October, yet low enough for midsummer to feel like someone left the oven door open. The surrounding mesa is textbook Castilla-La Mancha: a giant chessboard of wheat stubble and olive groves that fades into heat haze on the horizon. There are no postcard sierras here, just sky and the long, steady line of the Dehesa de Torrijos woods five kilometres south.

A Grid Drawn by Nobles and Farmers

Lucillos never had the good fortune – or bad luck, depending on your view – of being flattened by a motorway or saddled with a high-speed rail stop. That means the medieval bones are still visible. The street plan owes more to cattle tracks than to town planners: two main arteries cross at the plaza, and everything else runs parallel to the fields. Stone plaques beside weather-worn doors still carry the shields of the Condes de Cifuentes who once collected rents here; the paint has peeled, but the crests remain readable if you squat down far enough.

Houses are low, white and practical. Walls are thick enough to swallow the noon heat, and internal patios – often nothing grander than a square of beaten earth with a vine – act as natural refrigerators. A few properties have been bought by Madrileños looking for a weekend bolt-hole; you can spot them by the freshly oiled balconies and the satellite dishes aimed optimistically at the sky. The rest remain in the same families since the 1940s land reforms, their title deeds folded into tin boxes and kept above the fireplace.

San Juan Bautista and the Art of Being Closed

The parish church dominates the modest skyline the way a red post box dominates an English village green. Built in stages between the 14th and 18th centuries, it is a lesson in architectural thrift: brick where stone was scarce, a Renaissance portal grafted onto a blunt Romanesque tower, and a single nave wide enough for the whole congregation to hear the priest without microphones. The interior is cool, dim and smells of candle wax and old paper – the scent of every Spanish childhood.

There is no ticket office, no audio guide, and often no key. Mass is held at 11:00 on Sundays and 19:30 on weekdays; outside those times you need to ask in the house opposite the south door. A woman named Concha keeps the spare, but she eats lunch between two and three and refuses to reopen until the dishes are done. Patience is part of the visit.

Walking Without Waymarks

Lucillos is ringed by agricultural tracks that double as walking routes when the crops allow. None are sign-posted in the British sense; instead you follow the tractor grooves and trust the skyline. A gentle circuit north-east towards the abandoned threshing floors takes ninety minutes and delivers views across the Torrijos district – a quilt of greens and browns stitched together by dry-stone walls. Spring brings poppies and wild asparagus; by July the ground is baked into crazed china patterns and the only colour comes from the oleander bushes that line the irrigation ditches.

Stout shoes are advisable even for short strolls. The soil is calcareous and riddled with fist-sized flints that will turn an ankle if your mind wanders. There is no café at the far end, no National Trust shop, and mobile coverage drops out after the first kilometre. Bring water, a hat and the 1:50 000 Castilla-La Mancha sheet 958 if you dislike retracing your steps through an maize field taller than your head.

What Arrives on the Back of a Pick-Up

Food in Lucillos is still distributed like firewood. Twice a week a white van toots its way through the streets selling fish from the Mediterranean 350 kilometres away – hake kept on ice since 3 a.m., and tiny clams that taste of the sea even after a road trip across La Mancha. On Fridays the mobile butcher appears, his boot lid laid with rabbits, quails and the occasional wild boar shot the previous night in the Montes de Toledo. Prices are chalked on the wing mirror: conejo, 4 €; jabalí steak, 12 €.

The single grocery shop, open 09:00-14:00 and 17:00-20:30, stocks UHT milk, tinned chickpeas and local olive oil that costs €6 for a litre – roughly half the price asked in Borough Market. Bread arrives from the regional bakery at ten; if you want a baguette for lunch, queue at 09:55 because the supply rarely matches demand once the farmers finish their coffee.

For a sit-down meal you have two choices. Bar California, on the corner of Calle Real, serves migas – fried breadcrumbs with garlic and grapes – on winter Saturdays for €8 a plate. The owner, Manolo, will insist you try it with a splash of his house red, poured into a glass that once held marmalade. Alternatively, Casa Rural La Torrecilla offers a three-course menú del día (€14) if you book before ten in the morning. Expect soup thick enough to stand a spoon in, followed by lamb that has grazed within sight of the window.

Getting There, Staying Over

Lucillos lies 65 kilometres south-west of Toledo and 110 from Madrid. There is no railway; buses leave Toledo’s Estación de Autobuses at 07:15 and 16:30, taking ninety minutes and costing €6.35. The service is reliable except on public holidays, when the driver sometimes decides the passengers are too few and turns back at Burguillos. Hiring a car is simpler: take the A-5 west, exit at 78 towards Torrijos, then follow the CM-510 for twelve minutes. Petrol stations are scarce once you leave the motorway – fill up at the BP in Bargas.

Accommodation is limited to three rural houses, all converted from 19th-century farm buildings. Prices hover around €80 per night for two, including breakfast of toast rubbed with tomato and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice that tastes of the fields because, quite literally, it does. During the fiestas around 24 June rooms are booked by returning locals; reserve early or expect to drive back to Torrijos where the Hotel Palacete de Santa Marta has air-conditioning and a pool.

When the Bells Stop

Evening in Lucillos arrives suddenly. The sun drops behind the grain silo, the temperature falls ten degrees in as many minutes, and swifts give way to bats that flicker under the streetlights. By ten the only sound is the occasional clack of dominoes from the bar and the church clock counting down to midnight. It is quiet enough to hear your own footsteps echo off the plaster walls – a reminder that you are temporary, while the village, for all its cracks and patched roofs, has been here since the counts rode out with their retinues and the wheat was cut by hand.

Come for the space, the hush and the knowledge that somewhere still runs on bell time rather than Twitter. Just remember to buy your bread early, keep change for the fish van, and never expect Concha to interrupt her lunch – even for architecture.