Alar del Rey

The water at Alar del Rey doesn’t rush. It slips from a stone sluice, spreads into a shallow basin and then waits, flat as glass, for the first lock gate to yawn open. This is kilometre zero of the Canal de Castilla, the 18th-century water-road that once hauled grain from the heart of Spain to the northern ports. Imperial engineers chose this high, wind-scrubbed plateau—850 m above sea level—because the maths worked: from here the channel could run downhill for 207 km without a single pump. The village that grew up around the wharves never grew very much; even today only 900 people call Alar del Rey home, and most of them live in stone houses that turn honey-coloured when the afternoon sun hits.

Walk down the main street at six o’clock and you’ll hear the same sounds the boatmen heard two centuries ago: clacking hooves, the squeak of a metal weather-vane, someone rolling a barrel across the old warehouse yard. Tourism leaflets call the place “quiet”; a better word is “steady”. Nothing is hidden, nothing is staged. The triple staircase lock still leaks through its oak gates, the covered promenade—an iron-and-glass Victorian walkway shipped up from Bilbao in 1904—still shelters elderly men playing cards beneath a ceiling painted the colour of pistachio ice-cream.

How the Canal Stole the Town’s Heart

Start at the port basin. Two stone granaries, heavy as medieval keeps, flank the water. Their wooden beams are black with age and smell faintly of old grain. Between them runs a narrow cobbled ramp where mules once hauled 30-tonne lighters up from the river Pisuerga. The triple lock is ten paces away; watch the mechanism and you’ll see 18th-century engineering stripped to its essence. Iron rack, wooden paddle, counter-weighted gate. When the canal operates—three or four times a week in summer, weather permitting—the lock-keeper still works everything by hand. Admission is free, but he’ll accept a euro for the oil can.

A paved path shadows the water south towards Herrera de Pisuerga. The route is pancake-flat, originally laid for the towing teams who dragged boats with hemp ropes. Cyclists share it with dog-walkers and the occasional tractor whose tyres leave a perfume of hot rubber and straw. After 4 km the towpath crosses a stone aqueduct; stop here at dusk and you’ll see barn owls hunting between the arches. Bring binoculars: herons, kingfishers and the odd osprey use the canal as a navigational line between the cereal plains and the Cantabrian mountains.

A Plateau that Thinks it’s a Plain

Alar del Rey sits on the southern lip of the Montaña Palentina, but don’t expect craggy peaks at the garden gate. The landscape rolls, nothing more. Wheat and barley shimmer like pale corduroy until the horizon buckles twenty kilometres north. That subtle tilt is enough to drop the average July temperature four degrees below Madrid’s; nights are cool enough for a jumper even in August. In winter the same altitude means frost on the windscreen and occasional snow that closes the mountain road to Cervera de Pisuerga. The railway, however, keeps running: three Regional Express trains a day to Palencia, one to Santander. A single ticket to the coast costs €11.50 and takes just under two hours—one reason British property-hunters who land at Santander airport sometimes end up here rather than on the overpriced coast.

Inside the village everything is within a ten-minute radius. The parish church of San Andrés squats on a square that smells of plane trees and diesel from the morning delivery van. Its tower is 15th-century, plain except for a ring of stork nests that clatter like faulty transmissions every time a parent returns. There is no cathedral, no alcázar, no golden stone labyrinth; instead you get the minor pleasures of provincial Spain—wrought-iron balconies, timber eaves carved with sheaves of wheat, a bakery that still stamps the village name on each loaf.

What You’ll Eat and When You’ll Eat It

Restaurants number exactly five, and two of them close on random Tuesdays if trade looks thin. Menus are printed in Spanish only; the waiters will slow down if you try, but they won’t switch to English. Order sopa castellana and you receive a clay bowl of garlic broth, paprika, scraps of Serrano ham and a poached egg bobbing like a lost cricket ball. It costs €4 and arrives with a slab of bread the size of a house brick. Lechazo—milk-fed lamb roasted in a wood-fired oven—follows if you’re hungry enough to split a half-kilo portion between two. Expect to pay €22–25 a head including house wine that tastes of blackberries and furniture polish. Vegetarians get judiones (giant butter beans stewed with saffron) and the local queso de Burgos, a mild fresh cheese that spreads like ricotta on the complimentary bread.

Lunch service ends at 15:30 sharp; turn up at 15:35 and you’ll be directed to the supermarket DIA where pre-packed bocadillos sit under plastic bells. Evening meals don’t start until 20:30, so fill up at tea-time or adopt the Spanish schedule and enjoy the empty streets while everyone else is asleep.

Making the Place Your Base

Accommodation is limited to two small hotels and a handful of village houses let through the regional tourism board. The smartest option is the Hotel Canal de Castilla, a converted grain store with beams the width of railway sleepers. Doubles from €70 including garage space for bicycles. Cheaper rooms sit above the bars on Calle Real; €35 buys a clean double, a view of the promenade and the distant thump of Saturday karaoke until 02:00. Bring ear-plugs or join in—Queen is surprisingly popular.

If you’re without a car, check the bus timetable before you commit. There are two buses a day to Palencia, one to Burgos, none on Sunday. Taxis exist but must be booked a day ahead; the rank outside the station is empty more often than not. Hire cars are available at Santander airport; the drive is 115 km, mostly motorway, and takes 75 minutes unless you get stuck behind a truck full of pigs climbing the pass at Arenas de Iguña.

The Upsides and the Downsides

Alar del Rey will never compete with the tiled courtyards of Andalucía or the Rioja wine-route buzz. That is both its appeal and its limitation. Coach parties don’t arrive, which means you can stand alone on the aqueduct at sunset and hear only water and the creak of your own cycling shoes. It also means that if you want flamenco, nightclubs or even a shop open on Sunday afternoon you will be disappointed. Rain is another reality: the plateau catches Atlantic weather that has nowhere else to go, so April and October can deliver week-long drizzles that turn the towpath to porridge.

Come in late May instead, when the wheat is knee-high and the storks are teaching their young to fly. Mornings smell of wet earth and wood-smoke; afternoons are warm enough to sit outside the single café and watch the local abuelos argue over cards. Stay two nights—one to arrive, one to linger—and you’ll leave with the satisfied feeling that you have seen Spain’s interior without the soundtrack of English menus or souvenir clappers. Head north on the train if you fancy the sea; the canal, meanwhile, will still be sliding slowly south, carrying nothing more urgent than a pair of mallards and the reflection of another 300-year-old bridge.