Villabáñez

The church tower of Santa María del Castillo is visible for three kilometres in every direction, a sandstone exclamation mark rising from an ocean of wheat. At dawn the grain shimmers like watered silk; by mid-afternoon it turns the colour of digestive biscuits. This is Villabáñez, population 512 on a busy Sunday, altitude 749 m, twenty-three kilometres east of Valladolid and exactly one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. Mobile reception drops before the hire car even slows for the village limit; the loudest noise is the wind testing the hinges of abandoned adobe barns.

What altitude actually means here

Seven hundred metres is high enough to lift Villabáñez clear of the stifling heat bowl that traps the provincial capital in July, yet too low for Alpine pretensions. Summer nights drop to 14 °C, so bring a fleece even in August; winter mornings can start at –4 °C, but the roads usually stay open. The plateau is called the Páramos del Esgueva – “páramo” translates roughly as “bleak upland” – and the name is honest. There are no pine-clad slopes, just rolling cereal ocean. The reward is air that tastes of straw and distant rain, and skies that feel taller than anywhere on the Costa del Sol.

Because the land is flat, the walking is easy. A figure-of-eight loop starts behind the church, heads south along a farm track for 4 km, then cuts back through the hamlet of Mojados Abajo. Total ascent: 28 m. Spring brings calandra larks hovering overhead; September adds threshing dust and the smell of diesel. Carry water – there isn’t a café at either end.

Architecture without the postcards

Villabáñez never had a castle, despite what the church’s dedication suggests. What it does have is a textbook collection of Castilian rural building materials: ochre adobe bricks the width of a forearm, timber doors blackened by centuries of grain dust, and walls capped with curved Arab tiles designed to shrug off hail. Half the street fronts need repointing; the other half have been briskly rendered in modern cement, creating a patchwork that historians hate and photographers love. Look for the 1760 date-stone on Calle del Medio, then notice the satellite dish bolted straight through it. No one apologises; the village is still being lived in, not curated.

The church itself keeps quirky hours: open for mass at 11:00 on Sunday and for a dusting session whenever the sacristan feels like it. If the oak doors are shut, the key hangs on a nail inside the bar opposite – seriously. Inside, the retablo is gilt-heavy Baroque paid for by wool money in 1734; the south aisle contains a plaster Virgin whose face was repainted in 1987 and now looks faintly surprised to find herself in Castile.

Eating: one bar, one rule

There is exactly one public food outlet, the Bar-Shop “Nuevo,” open 07:00–15:00 and 19:00–22:00, closed Tuesday evenings and all day Thursday. Order the lechazo asado (milk-fed lamb) twenty-four hours ahead or accept whatever María has thawed: usually migas (fried breadcrumbs with chorizo) or a tortilla thick as a doorstep. A plate of lamb, half a roasted red pepper and a coffee sets you back €14; card payments accepted only over €20, so bring cash. The wine list is a choice between Cigales rosado or water, both served at cellar temperature because the fridge broke during the last fiesta and no one has got round to fixing it.

Self-caterers should stock up in Medina de Rioseco, 11 km north, where the SuperSol opens until 21:30 and sells Cathedral City cheddar for the homesick. Sunday trading remains illegal in rural Castile; if you land on a weekend, make do with crisps and the village’s surprisingly good craft beer, brewed in a shed behind the football pitch and sold in 33 cl bottles with hand-written labels.

When the fields turn into a dance floor

Fiestas are not staged for visitors – they happen despite them. The Virgen de la Asunción brings the village’s population back to 800 for three days around 15 August. Brass bands start at midnight, fireworks echo across the wheat like rifle shots, and every household sets up a plastic table on the pavement for gin-and-tonic duty. Strangers will be handed a glass within minutes; refusal is taken as personal insult. Accommodation is impossible unless you booked the villa in March; day-trippers can join the public paella at 15:00 on the Saturday, donation €5, served from a pan two metres wide and stirred with a boat oar.

Spring is calmer. Semana Santa involves a single procession at dusk on Maundy Thursday, the bearers in purple Capirotes that look oddly like Ku-Klux-Klan gear until you remember the tradition predates the American South by several centuries. The brass band here consists of four pensioners and a girl on snare drum; the effect, under flickering sodium streetlights, is unexpectedly moving.

Practicalities that matter

Getting here: Ryanair flies Stansted–Valladolid April–October; outside those months fly to Madrid and drive two hours up the A-62. Hire cars must be booked in advance – the airport desk shuts for siesta 14:00–16:00 and will give your automatic to someone else if you’re late. From Valladolid take the A-62 west, exit 146, then follow the VA-113 for 9 km; the road is single-track for the last stretch, so pull in for oncoming grain lorries.

Where to stay: two self-catering villas, both with pools, both €120–€150 per night mid-week, €200 at fiesta time. “La Zanja” (licence VUT-47-135) sleeps six and has fibre broadband; “Casa del Páramo” sleeps four and allows dogs for an extra €20. There is no hotel, no pension, no campsite. The nearest alternative is a roadside hostal in Mojados, 17 km away, where €45 buys a room that smells of disinfectant and a breakfast of churros that taste of cardboard.

Weather reality check: May and October offer 22 °C days and cool starry nights. July tops 35 °C by 13:00; walking is feasible only before 10:00. January averages 5 °C and a wind that scythes across the plateau; bring chapstick and expect pink cheeks. Rain is scarce but torrential – if the sky turns charcoal, sprint for the car; the clay tracks glaze like ice within minutes.

Leaving without the souvenir

There is no gift shop. The only tangible memento is a bottle of village-brewed beer, or perhaps a handful of raw wheat plucked from the verge – legal, traditional, and oddly satisfying to roll between your fingers on the flight home. Villabáñez will not change your life, but it might recalibrate your sense of scale: one church, one bar, 360 degrees of horizon, and a silence so complete you can hear the wheat grow when the wind drops.