Requena de Campos

The cereal fields stop dead at a low stone wall. Beyond it, thirty-odd houses and a church tower rise exactly 790 m above sea level, high enough for the air to feel thinner than it should on the Castilian plateau. This is Requena de Campos, a parish that fits inside a single OS grid square and still has room to spare. Switch the engine off and the soundtrack is immediate: larks overhead, a loose tile rattling on a roof of adobe, and the wind that has crossed three provinces without bumping into anything taller than a poplar.

High Plains Drifters

The village perches on the northern lip of the Tierra de Campos, a wheat ocean that changes colour with the agricultural calendar: emerald after the autumn rains, ochre once the combine has passed, then a bruised brown that British eyes associate with East Anglia in February. At this altitude frost can arrive overnight well into April; in July the thermometer brushes 35 °C yet the nights stay cool enough to need a jumper. Meteorologists call it a continentalised Mediterranean climate; locals call it “ocho meses de invierno y cuatro de infierno”.

What looks flat from the car window is actually a gentle roller-coaster. Field boundaries follow Roman centuriation lines, so any lane you choose lifts and drops like a green swell. Walk south-east for an hour and you drop 120 m to the Canal de Castilla, the 18th-century waterway that once carried grain to the sea. Cyclists use the tow-path as a traffic-free spine between Frómista and Boadilla del Camino; Requena is simply a punctuation mark 17 km from the nearest cash machine.

Mud, Stone and a Bell that Rings for One

The parish church of San Andrés stands a metre or two higher than everything else, not through pride but because the plaza was built on the only natural outcrop for miles. The tower is 12th-century Romanesque re-dressed in 16th-century brick; the lime wash is flaking, so each rainy season reveals another patch of ochre stonework. Step inside and the temperature falls five degrees. The single nave smells of candle wax and grain dust—farmers still heap the first sack of the harvest at the altar rail each September. There is no ticket desk, no audio guide, and often no one at all; if the door is locked, ask at the third house on the left where the key hangs on a hook labelled “la llave de Dios”.

Round the corner, two-storey houses are built from tapia: rammed earth mixed with straw and gravel. The walls, 80 cm thick, keep interiors cool in summer and warm in winter, but they hate driving rain. Every decade or so a storm peels off a fist-sized chunk and someone patches it with modern cement, creating a quilt of textures that conservationists despair over and photographers love. One ground-floor room has been reopened as a hen-house; the hens roost beneath a 19th-century painted ceiling of blue sky and plaster clouds.

A Walk, a Bird and Probably No Bar

Requena is a superb place to practise the Spanish art of doing very little quickly. A circular track leaves the village past an abandoned dovecot shaped like a miniature castle, then follows a drovers’ road used until the 1960s for moving sheep to winter pasture. After 4 km you reach the ruined ermita of San Pedro; swallows nest where the altar once stood. The path is dead level, but at 800 m sea-level exertion feels tougher than the same gradient at home—carry water even for a short stroll.

Binoculars justify the extra weight. The plains hold one of Europe’s last viable populations of great bustard, a turkey-sized bird that nevertheless manages to vanish against stubble. Dawn gives the best chance; stand beside any unharvested legume field and wait. If the bustards fail to appear, consolation prizes include Montagu’s harrier quartering the verge or a hoopoe posing on a telephone wire like a oversized woodpecker in a salmon-pink sweater.

There is, repeat, no café. The last place to buy a drink is the petrol station on the CL-615 outside Frómista; after that you are on your own. Pack a Spanish tortilla wedge and a couple of cans from a Palencia supermarket: the village bench faces west, so sunset comes with a side of liquid gold across the wheat.

When the Village Swells to 200

Every 15 August the population quadruples. Former residents drive up from Valladolid or Madrid, string bunting between the poplars, and stage a verbena that finishes with outdoor disco until the Guardia Civil remind the DJ of the noise statute. Visitors are welcome—buy a raffle ticket and you might win a ham or a leg of lamb. The fiesta coincides with the Perseid meteor shower; at midnight everyone wanders onto the football pitch (floodlights off) to watch shooting stars scratch the high, dry sky. Book accommodation early: the nearest hotel rooms are in Frómista, 25 min away by car, and they sell out to Camino de Santiago walkers.

Getting There, Staying Elsewhere

No British airline flies direct to Palencia—there isn’t an airport. Ryanair serves Valladolid (VLL) from London Stansted three times a week in summer; from the terminal a 45-minute bus reaches Palencia city, then a regional coach continues to Frómista. Hire bikes at Ciclo Turismo Palencia (€18 per day including helmet) and follow the canal north-east; the gravel surface is firm enough for road tyres and the gradient barely registers.

Sleep in Frómista’s Hotel San Telmo (doubles €70, stone walls thick enough to muffle the 7 a.m. church bells) or in Boadilla’s Casa de los Deseos, where the owner speaks fluent Camino-English and will collect weary cyclists if you phone from Requena’s only bench. Wild camping is tolerated beside the tow-path, but nights are colder than the map suggests—pack a three-season bag even in July.

The Honest Verdict

Requena de Campos offers nothing that would make a postcard publisher rich. On a wet February afternoon it can feel like the outer limit of civilisation: the shop shut twenty years ago, mobile coverage is patchy, and the wind whips horizontally across fields that look suspiciously like Lincolnshire. Yet that is precisely the point. Britain still has honey-stone Cotswold villages where coach parties queue for cream teas; Spain keeps a handful of places where the loudest noise at midday is a lark. Bring your own sandwich, stay for the sunset, and you will understand why some locals wouldn’t swap their 30 neighbours for all the Michelin stars on the coast.