Santa Croya de Tera

The church bell strikes seven and the only other sound is a rucksack hitting the pavement outside Casa Anita. A lone pilgrim shoulders it, checks the scallop shell tied to his pack, and sets off towards the wheat fields that glow amber in the dawn. Santa Croya de Tera is awake, but only just.

This scatter of adobe houses, 45 minutes north-west of Zamora, sits at 700 m on Spain’s northern plateau. The village owes its existence to two things: the river Tera, which irrigates a thin ribbon of poplars, and the Vía de la Plata, the Roman road-turned-pilgrim-route that still funnels a trickle of walkers between Seville and Santiago. Four hundred and ninety-eight residents, one bar, one church, one shop that opens when the owner feels like it: that is the inventory. If you arrive expecting a plaza mayor humming with cafés, you will be disappointed. If you want to see how Castile lives when nobody is watching, you have come to the right place.

Adobe, Arches and the Aroma of Stew

Start at the Iglesia de Santa María. Twelfth-century stonework forms the base, but the brick bell-tower is a blunt later addition, as if someone had stuck a chimney on a barn. Inside, the air is cool and smells of candle wax and dust; the altarpiece is modest, the guided tour non-existent. The door is usually unlocked between 09:00 and 11:00; outside those hours you may have to ask at the bar for the key. No charge, but coins for the collection plate are appreciated.

From the church, Calle Real runs the length of the village in under five minutes. Houses are the colour of dry biscuits, their wooden balconies painted the traditional green that once used copper oxide to repel insects. Adobe walls bulge like well-fed stomachs; in places you can see finger marks where builders pressed straw into clay. Half the dwellings have been restored by weekenders from Madrid, the other half still shelter donkeys and chickens. Peek through an open gateway and you will spot both a satellite dish and a handcart: Santa Croya has never quite decided which century it prefers.

The only public building of note is the old school, closed since 2004 when pupil numbers dropped to three. Its playground is now a vegetable patch: runner beans climb the goalposts, a scarekeeper wears a Real Madrid shirt. The sense of shrinkage is impossible to ignore, yet the place feels alive. Washing flaps on lines, a dog barks, someone is practising scales on an out-of-tune piano. Emptiness, here, is relative.

Following the Silver Way

Step past the last house and wheat takes over. The camino is a stony lane between fields that stretch to a horizon as level as a spirit level. You can walk 6 km south to Calzadilla de Tera and back in under two hours; the route is way-marked by yellow arrows painted on fence posts. Boots are sensible – the surface is rutted by tractors – but the gradient is negligible. In April the soil smells of rain; in July it smells of hot iron. Keep an eye out for Montagu’s harriers quartering the crop; their wings flick like paper aeroplanes.

If you prefer circles to out-and-backs, follow the river path eastwards. Poplars and willows give shade, kingfishers flash turquoise, and every so often a concrete irrigation channel gurgles like a giant soda stream. The loop to the ruined molino and back takes 45 minutes; you will share it only with cattle egrets and the occasional cow that has drifted through a broken fence.

Winter changes the rules. At 700 m the meseta can freeze hard: daytime highs of 6 °C, nights that bite to –8 °C. Camino walkers still pass through, their breath fogging, but mud sticks to boots and the bar shuts early. From December to February the owner heads to her daughter in Benavente – ring ahead if you need dinner.

Calories and Coins

The Bar de la Plaza (it is not actually on a plaza, but nobody has bothered to rename it) opens at 07:00 for coffee and tostada. Ask for tostada con tomate and you will receive a hunk of bread rubbed with garlic, tomato and a glug of olive oil; request butter and jam if you must, but expect a raised eyebrow. The menú del día costs €11 and runs to soup, judiones (butter beans stewed with chorizo) and a slab of pork shoulder the size of a paperback. Vegetarians can negotiate huevos rotos con patatas – basically chips topped with fried egg – but veganism is still regarded as a misunderstanding.

Stock up on water and fruit before you set off; the next services are 22 km away in Rionegro del Puente. There is no cash machine in the village, and the bar’s card reader fails whenever the wind blows from the west. Euros are king.

Accommodation is simple. Casa Anita has four en-suite rooms above the baker’s erstwhile warehouse (doubles €45, singles €35). Sheets are line-dried, Wi-Fi arrives in dribbles, and the shower thermostat thinks 38 °C is a suggestion rather than a promise. Evening meals are available if you book before 14:00 – expect lentil stew, local cheese and wine poured from an unlabelled jug. Pilgrims can claim a bottom-bunk discount (€25 half-board), but the house closes entirely from mid-January to early February while Anita visits her grandchildren.

Arriving and Leaving

Public transport demands patience. ALSA runs one bus from Zamora at 18:00 Monday to Friday; the return leaves Santa Croya at 07:25, which is handy only if you enjoy dawn. Journey time is 55 minutes, fare €4.65 each way. There is no service at weekends; a taxi from Zamora costs around €55 and must be booked the day before (Radio Taxi Zamora, +34 980 522 255). Trains connect Zamora with Madrid-Chamartín every two hours; the fastest takes 1 h 10 m and advance fares start at €16.

Drivers should leave the A-6 at Benavente and follow the ZA-701 for 25 km. The approach road is single-track for the last 8 km; meet a combine harvester and someone is reversing into the wheat. Parking is unrestricted and free – simply angle your wheels onto the dirt margin and hope the dog that wanders out of the grain does not fancy your tyres.

What Santa Croya Does Not Do

There is no beach, no mountain, no souvenir shop flouncing with fridge magnets. Nightlife ends when the bar owner stacks the chairs at 22:30. If it rains, you will get wet; if it is hot, shade is rationed. The village does not pretend otherwise, and that is the point. People stop here because they are walking an ancient road, or because they have read that somewhere between the wheat and the sky Castile still keeps its own slow time. They leave with thighs coated in dust and a sudden realisation that silence, too, can ring like a bell.

Book for a single night and you may find yourself lingering for breakfast, then second coffee, then a final stroll to the river to see how the light has changed. The meseta will not flatter you, but it will hold you – gently, without fuss – until the road calls again.