Simancas

The drawbridge is up. Not in medieval melodrama, but because the duty archivist has nipped to the loo. A school party from León waits, trainers scuffing gravel, while a British couple hover at the gate wondering if the five-euro entry fee is cash-only. (It is; the nearest cash machine is fifteen kilometres away in Valladolid.) This is the everyday rhythm of Simancas castle, repository of five centuries of Spanish paperwork and the only reason most foreigners stop in this stone village at all.

At 725 metres above sea-level the air is thinner than on the coast and the wind carries a snap even in May. The Pisuerga river loops below, glinting like polished pewter, irrigation channels fanning out towards lettuce plots that supply Valladolid’s Saturday market. Up here the meseta’s continental deal is clear: bright sun, cold shade, zero humidity. Summer midday hits 35 °C but nights drop to 17 °C; in January the thermometer can flirt with –8 °C and the castle’s limestone walls sweat frost. If you visit between December and February, arrive after ten when the ice on the medieval bridge has thawed; the Guardia Civil close the road when it slicks over.

Inside the paper fortress

Carlos I ordered the castle converted into an archive in 1540, reasoning that a moat and arrow-slits were as good for protecting lawsuits as for repelling French raiders. The guided tour lasts forty-five minutes and is worth it for the climate-controlled stacks alone: 35 km of shelving, smelling faintly of old rag paper and graphite, where every document is tagged with a handwritten string of numbers longer than a Spanish bank account. Guides wheel out facsimiles—Felipe II’s spidery marginalia on an Aztec tribute list, a signed surrender note from Irish chieftains delivered to Kinsale in 1601—then whisk you up to the battlements for a view across the cereal plains. Only one tour a day is offered in English, usually at 11:30; put your name on the clipboard when you pay, don’t assume staff will notice your accent.

Photography is banned inside, a rule taken seriously: the same guard who changes the video monitor’s language to English will stride over if your phone appears. The ten-minute film is unexpectedly gripping—ships’ musters, plague ordinances, a 1588 payroll for the Armada that lists sailors paid in cloves because the treasury was empty. Children start fidgeting; adults emerge blinking, wondering why British schools never mentioned that Spain’s American silver arrived with this much paperwork.

What the village does when the coach leaves

By 13:30 the tour buses depart and Simancas reverts to provincial calm. Housewives queue for crusty barras at the bakery on Calle Real; the baker slips a paper bag of pasteles de Simancas—thin custard tarts scented with lemon—across the counter for two euros. Lunch options are limited and shutter at 14:00 sharp. Mesón de la Villa will sell you a half-ration of lechazo, roast suckling lamb caramelised into shards, with proper chips rather than the frozen variety. La Ceaza does a grilled chicken plate for anyone who can’t face more meat; ask for “patatas extra, sin ensalada” if you’re travelling with picky offspring. House wine comes from nearby Tudela de Duero and is lighter than Rioja—order “un tinto joven” for the soft, almost Beaujolais style.

Between 14:00 and 17:00 the place empties. Even the swallows seem to siesta. If you arrive mid-afternoon without a plan you will stand in the Plaza Mayor counting stork nests on the church tower and wishing you’d bought that second custard tart. Use the lull to walk the river path: a flat 3-kilometre circuit under poplars, signed as “Ruta del Pisuerga”. Cyclists share the track, but traffic is light and kingfishers flash turquoise above the water. In July the shade is welcome; in November take a wind-breaker because the damp breeze rides straight down from the Cantabrian mountains.

Clues to a busier past

The thirteenth-century Iglesia del Salvador keeps the square tower and brick-patched stonework common along this stretch of the Duero basin. It is usually locked outside service times; knock at the presbytery door and the sacristan may appear, wiping lunch from his moustache, to switch on lights and point out the sixteenth-century Flemish panels tucked behind the main altarpiece. No charge, but the customary euro in the box keeps goodwill alive.

Opposite, Calle de los Rastreros still follows the line of the vanished Jewish quarter. Narrow lanes dog-leg between timbered houses whose ground floors once stored wool; look up and you’ll see grooves where merchants slotted beams to hang hides. Nothing is labelled, so the tourist office’s free leaflet—available from a cupboard outside the library—helps decode the carved coats of arms. Without it the village risks feeling like a set of atmospheric but anonymous walls.

Five minutes south the medieval bridge spans the Pisuerga in seven unequal arches. Roman engineers probably laid the first stones, later rebuilt after fifteenth-century floods. Lorries now thunder across the 1960s concrete bridge alongside, leaving the old structure to anglers and photographers. Sunset turns the stone amber and the river black; mist pools between poplars on autumn evenings, the scene that graces every local council calendar but which you will likely share only with a retired fisherman who nods, lifts his rod in salute, and returns to eying the barbel.

When to come, how to leave

Simancas works best as a half-day bolt-on to Valladolid. ALSA buses leave the city’s Estación de Autobuses every hour, take twenty minutes and cost €2.05 each way. Last return is at 21:00; miss it and a taxi costs €25–30, if you can persuade one to come out. Drivers should ignore the subterranean car park under the Plaza Mayor—spaces fit a Fiat 500, not a Ford Focus. Free parking lines the river road (C/ Puente) and you’re back on the A-62 within five minutes.

Spring and mid-September to mid-October give warm days, cool nights and storks clacking overhead. August is furnace-hot; archives and bars close early, and only Spanish history students on research grants wander the streets. Winter brings crisp light and empty castle tours, but cafes remove outdoor tables and the river walk turns muddy after rain.

Staying overnight is possible—Hotel Felipe Cuatro has serviceable rooms above a bar—but unless you have scholarly business in the archive you will have seen everything by teatime. Better to be back in Valladolid for dinner, perhaps musing over why British bureaucracy feels modern when here, in a Castilian village, they were colour-coding memoranda while Shakespeare was still learning his alphabet.