Coca

At 784 metres the air thins just enough to make the brickwork glow. Stand on the castle’s wall-walk and the Meseta rolls away in wheat-coloured waves until the pinewood seams darken the horizon. Below, tractors thread the village streets, their diesel note drifting up like punctuation marks in an otherwise empty sentence. This is Coca: part military statement, part working farm hub, and still only 45 minutes’ drive from Segovia’s Roman aqueduct.

The Red Fortress

Everything starts with the Castillo de Coca, and the castle starts with brick. Fifteenth-century builders chose the local clay, fired it hard, then raised a double-walled fortress whose cylindrical towers throw hexagonal shadows across the dry moat. English visitors expecting grey stone battlements find instead a building that looks almost Tudor until the geometric arabesques give its Mudéjar pedigree away. Entry is €6—cash only, the machine by the gate is “rota” more often than not—so bring notes. Tickets are sold from a hatch in the old stable block; while you queue, duck into the interpretation room where a scale model shows how the defences once bristled.

Guided visits in English run at midday and half-past four; outside those times you may tag along on a Spanish tour, but the stewards are relaxed about letting foreigners roam the wall-walk unescorted. The stair treads are original stone, dished by five centuries of boots—grippy soles advised. From the parapet you can trace the outline of the vanished town walls and, beyond them, the irrigation circles that break the plain like green coins. There is no café inside; the nearest water is a 300-metre walk back to the village square, so fill a bottle before you climb.

A Town That Refuses to be a Museum

Leave through the Arco de la Villa and Coca snaps into focus as a living place, not a film set. A baker’s van idles outside the Colegio Público, delivering tomorrow’s breakfast while children chase footballs across the playground. The church of Santa María la Mayor squats at the top of Calle Mayor, its brick tower offset by a single stone pinnacle that survived an 18th-century lightning strike. Inside, the nave is cool and faintly resinous; the main retable glints with gilt that the Franciscan priests retouch each spring. Drop a euro in the box and the lights flick on just long enough to reveal the frescoed ribs above the altar.

Most shops close between two and five; plan lunch early or late. The Mesón de la Villa on Plaza Mayor still serves a three-course menú del día for €12, but the grill shuts at 3.30 sharp—several British visitors have been left staring at locked shutters, clutching hire-car keys and empty stomachs. If you miss the slot, buy a bocadillo from the tiny grocery opposite the town hall; they’ll slice chorizo to order and direct you to the bench beneath the elm.

Pine and Pasture: Walking the Surrounds

Coca sits on a shallow rise between the Duratón River and the pinewood plateau that supplied resin for Roman ships and later for Franco’s naval stores. A lattice of farm tracks radiates south-east toward the abandoned village of San Pedro de las Dueñas; the round-trip is 8 km, almost flat, and in April the verges foam with yellow mustards. Boot prints in the red soil belong to local hunters rather than hikers—weekdays you’ll have the path to yourself.

For something shorter, follow the signed “Ruta del Castillo” that circles the fortress moat at sunset. The light turns the brick copper, then blood-orange, before the temperature drops like a stone. Even in July the altitude keeps nights bearable; by contrast, midday sun is fierce, so start early or linger over coffee until the shadows lengthen. Winter brings sharp frosts and occasional snow—roads are cleared quickly, but the castle lifts its drawbridge if the wind whips above 60 km/h.

Wine Underground, Lamb Above

Segovia province is roasted-lamb country, and Coca’s asadores still cook lechazo in wood-fired brick ovens whose chimneys jut from cellar level like periscopes. A half portion feeds two; the meat arrives pale pink, skin blistered into an edible wafer. Ask for a simple ribera del Duero by the glass—most lists carry a young crianza that costs less than a London pint.

Beneath several houses you can descend into 19th-century bodegas: hand-hewn caves lined with glazed tiles where must was once cooled before travelling to Valladolid by mule. Two families open by request (enquire at the tourist office beside the town hall). The wine is gone, but the temperature holds a steady 14 °C year-round—step inside on a July afternoon and you’ll understand why the builders bothered.

When to Come, When to Stay Away

Spring and autumn give the kindest light and the quietest roads. On the first weekend of October the fiesta of the Virgen del Rosario fills the streets with processions and brass bands; rooms in the single hotel sell out months ahead. August is warm, sleepy, and oddly empty—Spanish families have migrated to the coast, leaving Coca to the occasional castle-hopper. Mid-winter weekends can be magical if you catch snow on the turrets, but cafés operate reduced hours and the castle tour may be cancelled if staff can’t get through from Valladolid.

There is no station; the bus from Segovia arrives at 10.15 and leaves at 17.25, which gives just enough time for the castle, lunch, and a quick circuit of the walls. With a car you can stitch Coca into a day of fortresses: Cuéllar’s turreted plaza is 35 minutes east, Turégano’s crag-top keep 25 minutes south. Between them the roads are empty, wheat fields unrolling like a beige carpet all the way to the horizon.

Brick Dust and Diesel

By five the sun slips behind the west tower and the brickwork cools. Tractors rumble home, their headlights picking out the same archway through which Roman legionaries once marched to the settlement of Cauca. The castle ticket collector counts coins, lowers the grille, and suddenly Coca belongs again to the people who live here rather than the people who visit. Walk back to the car park—the gravel crunches exactly as it did this morning—but now the fortress looms above you in silhouette, a rectangle of darkness cut out of a violet sky. No gift shop, no light show, just the smell of pine resin drifting down from the plateau and the knowledge that tomorrow the tractors will start once more.