Santo Domingo-Caudilla

The petrol pump in Santo Domingo-Caudilla locks up at two o’clock sharp. After that, anyone who arrives with the fuel light blinking must back-track fifteen kilometres to Torrijos and explain to the cashier why they didn’t fill up earlier. It is the first lesson the village teaches: here, the clock still matters more than the credit card.

At 569 metres above sea level the place sits just high enough for the Meseta wind to scrape the heat off summer afternoons, yet low enough for winter mists to pool between the cereal plots like milk in a saucer. The difference is noticeable: May mornings can be five degrees cooler than Toledo, 45 km to the east, while January nights drop below freezing long before the city feels it. Pack a fleece even for Easter; the plateau does not do gentle transitions.

Two villages, one parish, half a castle

Santo Domingo and Caudilla existed as rival hamlets long before the 19th-century bureaucrats merged them on paper. Walk from the newer football ground to the ruined fortress above Caudilla and you cross an invisible boundary older than most European borders. The castle – little more than a keep and one curtain wall – is not sign-posted, which explains why the only visitor book in recent years is a damp notebook wedged under a stone. Phone the ayuntamiento the day before if you want the key-keeper; he cycles over from his finca, opens the iron gate, and refuses any tip beyond a polite “gracias”. From the parapet the view is textbook La Mancha: a chessboard of ochre fields, a single freight train inching towards Lisbon, and the white dots of villages so small they share doctors, droughts and, occasionally, marriage partners.

Down in the twin centres, the churches are open only when the widows who dust the pews decide to unlock them. Both buildings are 16th-century Castilian plain: thick walls, a single nave, wood beams that still smell of incense and floor polish. If the door of Santo Domingo de Silos is ajar, step inside and look for the fragment of Moorish brick re-used in the north wall – a quiet reminder that the Reconquista passed through here twice, once in victory and once in retreat.

What to do when nothing is “on”

There is no museum, nointerpretation centre, no olive-oil tasting bar with chrome stools. Instead there is a network of farm tracks that fan out towards Los Navalucillos and Mazarambroz, flat enough for ageing knees and way-marked only by the occasional granite milestone a tractor has nudged sideways. Early risers share the paths with shepherds moving Manchega sheep between stubble fields; the animals move faster than you’d think, bells clanking like loose change. Cyclists can complete a 35 km loop south to the edge of the Montes de Toledo and back before lunch, provided they carry two bottles – shade is scarce and the cafés close when the last regular finishes his brandy.

Back in the village, buy a round of drinks from the grocery on Plaza de España and take the plastic chairs outside. Locals treat the gesture as rent for occupying the bench beneath the plane trees; they will tell you which fields are studded with Roman roof tiles and why the wheat silo was painted green in 1987. The conversation ends when the church bell tolls for the Angelus; mobiles stay in pockets because everyone already knows who is leaving, who is pregnant, and whose olives froze last week.

Food that does not photograph well – and tastes better for it

The only restaurant, Mesón El Pinar, opens at 14:00 and stops taking orders when the guisando runs out, usually around 15:30. The pisto manchego arrives swimming in olive oil with a fried egg sliding across the surface like a yellow life-raft; ask for “poco sal” if blood pressure is a concern. The star is the queso curado made by the village co-op: younger, milder and nothing like the cryovacked wedges sold in British supermarkets. A slab the size of a paperback costs €4 and will perfume the car all the way to Madrid. Vegetarians survive on migas – breadcrumbs fried with garlic, grapes and the occasional strand of peppers – while carnivores face carne en salsa, pork so soft it can be eaten with a spoon. House rosado from Dominio de Valdepusa is served in water glasses, chilled just enough to take the edge off August dust.

If you are self-catering, the bakery opens at 07:00, sells out of baguette-shaped pan de pueblo by 09:30, then locks the door for the siesta until the following dawn. Plan breakfast accordingly.

When silence turns into fireworks

For fifty-one weeks of the year the village soundtrack is wind, dogs and the click of dominoes in the bar. The fifty-second week – usually the second in August – belongs to the fiestas de Caudilla. Brass bands march at 03:00, vaquillas (heifers with padded horns) chase teenagers round a makeshift ring, and the castle hill becomes an open-air disco fuelled by pig-roast and cheap gin. Light sleepers should book a room on the western fringe; the church bell competes with the bass until the sun rises over the grain silos. In May, the smaller romería of Santo Domingo de Silos fills the lanes with tractors decked in laurel and girls in polka-dot dresses, a procession that feels closer to harvest festival than Holy Week.

Getting there, getting out

There is no railway station, no ride-share rank, and as of 2022 no Sunday bus. A car is essential; the A-5 motorway spits you out at junction 104, after which you drive twelve minutes across pancake-flat countryside wondering whether the sat-nav has finally lost its mind. Madrid is 90 minutes east, Trujillo 75 west – which makes the village a useful overnight pause for anyone heading to Portugal and sick of the motorway hotels around Talavera.

Accommodation is limited to three guesthouses, none with more than eight rooms. Casa Rural La Panera (€70 b&b double) occupies an old grain loft opposite the bakery; walls are thick enough to muffle the dawn delivery van, and the owner brings coffee in a glass jug strong enough to restart a heart. There is also a municipal albergue with bunk beds for €15, popular with Camino stragglers who took a wrong turn somewhere in Extremadura and decided to keep walking north until the geography made sense.

Fill up before you leave. The petrol station re-opens at six, but the card reader is moody with British chip-and-pin, and the attendant speaks only the speed of silence. Somewhere between the cereal silos and the first roundabout you will pass a hand-painted sign: “Gracias por venir. Vuelve cuando quieras.” It is the closest thing the village has to a marketing slogan, and – unusually for tourism copy – it happens to be true.