Redecilla Del Camino

The wheat fields stop abruptly. One minute you're winding through Rioja's patchwork of vines, the next the road levels onto a high plateau where the horizon stretches sixty kilometres to the Sierra de la Demanda. A stone pillar appears on the right—sixteenth-century, mushroom-capped, once used to announce medieval edicts. You've reached Redecilla del Camino, population 112, first village in Castilla y León after the Riojan wine country. The air is thinner here at 800 metres, and the wind carries the dry scent of sun-baked earth rather than grapes.

The Church That Opens When It Feels Like It

Most visitors march straight to the fortress-thick walls of Nuestra Señora de la Calle. They're hunting a single piece of stone: a twelfth-century baptismal font carved from one block, its eight faces crowded with bearded apostles and the Heavenly Jerusalem. Art historians rate it among the finest Romanesque fonts on the entire 780-kilometre French Route to Santiago. The problem is getting close enough to judge. The church is kept locked outside Saturday-evening Mass and the 11 a.m. Sunday service. At other times you peer through a glass panel in the north door, forehead pressed to the ironwork, trying to make out the reliefs in the gloom. Bring a torch; the custodian lives two doors down and will unlock if you ask politely, but there’s no bell, so you may need to raise your voice above the wind.

If you do get inside, the font sits just left of the nave, still used for baptisms today. The octagonal bowl is waist-high—designed for total immersion, not gentle Anglican christenings—and the stone retains the polish of eight centuries of infant feet. Eighteenth-century renovations added a baroque altarpiece that rather shouts at the earlier masonry, yet the Gothic ribs of the roof remain visible if you tilt your head back. Pause for a moment and you’ll hear swallows nesting in the eaves, the only congregation most days.

One Street, Two Terraces and the Smell of Garlic Soup

Redecilla stretches for barely four hundred metres along the Calle Real, the original pilgrims’ highway. Arcaded stone porches shade the pavement; their granite columns are chipped where cartwheels once clipped them. House numbers stop at 47; several doors still display the family coat of arms awarded to merchants who bankrolled fifteenth-century wool trains to Burgos. There is no souvenir shop, no tourist office, no cash machine. The solitary bar, Casa Fermín, opens at 7 a.m. for coffee and closes the moment the last pilgrim finishes lunch, usually around 3 p.m. Miss that window and you’ll go hungry until the hotel restaurant fires up its grill at 8.

When it is open, order the sopa de ajo—garlic soup thickened with bread and paprika, topped with a poached egg. It costs €4 and arrives in a clay bowl hot enough to scald away the plateau’s morning chill. The set menú del día (€12) runs to grilled pork steak, chips and a tub of yoghurt: plain fare cooked with the confidence that comes from feeding walkers who haven’t seen a vegetable since Logroño. Vegetarians should ask for tortilla española; the kitchen keeps one on the counter for emergencies.

Walking Out: Sunflowers, Sky and the Rollo

If you arrive with daylight to spare, continue west for twenty minutes on the Camino track. The path crosses a medieval bridge over the tiny river Redecilla, then climbs gently through sunflower fields that turn their backs to the afternoon sun. After 2 km you’ll reach a fork: left to Belorado, right to the ruined hermitage of Virgen de la Plaza. Either route gives you the full high-plateau experience—cereal steppe unchanged since the twelfth century, larks stitching the sky overhead, the Sierra de la Demanda floating like a mirage on the horizon. Turn around and Redecilla’s church tower is already a thumbnail on the skyline; the village shrinks fast once you leave.

Back in the centre, inspect the rollo jurisdiccional beside the road. The pillar is less ornate than those in nearby villages, but it marks the spot where medieval officials read out new laws and measured cloth with the official rod. Touch the grooves near the base: they’re the standard length of a vara castellana, the yardstick that once governed trade from here to Valladolid.

Altitude, Silence and the Pleasure of Nothing Happening

At 800 m, nights are cool even in July. Daytime temperatures swing 15 degrees between dawn and midday, so pack a fleece whatever the month. Winter brings sharp frost and the occasional snow flurry; the N-120 is gritted, but side roads can be glassy by 6 p.m. Mobile reception flickers between Vodafone and Orange; there is no public Wi-Fi unless you check into the three-star Hotel Redecilla del Camino (doubles from €55, pilgrim discount €35). The hotel occupies a former pilgrim hospice; its lounge still has the stone trough where travellers once washed their feet.

Silence is the village’s real luxury. After the last walker leaves at sunrise, the only sounds are the church bell striking the quarter and the occasional tractor heading out to drill wheat. If you stay overnight, sit on the arcade steps at dusk. Swifts dive between the roofs, the sky fades from steel blue to bruised violet, and the plateau releases the day’s heat in a faint shimmer. It is the sort of quiet that makes city dwellers uneasy for ten minutes, then utterly seduces them.

Getting There, Getting Out, Getting Fed

By car: From Burgos, take the N-120 east towards Logroño. After 48 km look for the stone rollo on the right; the village entrance is 200 m further. Parking is free along the main street.

On foot: Redecilla sits 21 km east of Santo Domingo de la Calzada and 11 km west of Belorado, standard stages on the Camino Francés. The approach from the east is flat; from the west you drop 200 m off the Montes de Oca, so legs feel the relief.

By bus: ALSA runs one daily service from Burgos at 16:15 (€6.45, 55 min). The return bus leaves at 7 a.m., which suits pilgrims but not day-trippers.

Cash: There is no ATM. Stock up in Santo Domingo or Belorado; the hotel can advance €50 on a card but charges €2 for the favour.

Food shops: A tiny ultramarinos opens erratically opposite the church; milk, tinned tuna, overpriced chocolate. Closest supermarket is in Belorado.

The Honest Verdict

Redecilla del Camino will never fill a weekend. Stay longer than half a day and you’ll have walked every street twice, photographed the font through glass and run out of conversation with the village’s three permanent English-speakers. That, though, is precisely its appeal. It offers a distilled shot of northern Castile: tough stone houses built for winter gales, a masterpiece you can’t quite see, food that tastes better because the wind tried to freeze you, and the knowledge that the next human settlement is an hour’s stride across an empty plain. Come for the font, stay for the silence, leave before the bar shuts—ideally with a Santiago stamp in your credencial and garlic soup on your breath.