Alcazarén

The tractor rattling past Bar El Rubién at seven in the morning is your wake-up call. By half past, the smell of coffee and rendered pork fat drifts across the single main road, mingling with resin from the surrounding pines. This is Alcazaren: population 615, altitude 731 m, and exactly one bakery. No castle, despite the Moorish-sounding name—just a grid of earth-coloured houses, a 16th-century church, and forests that stretch north until they bump into the Duero valley.

Most British travellers only hear the name if they’re walking the Camino Francés variant that cuts through Castilla y León on the way to Galicia. Pilgrims treat the village as a cheap bed and a hot shower before pushing on to Santiago. They arrive on foot, collect the albergue key from the bar, eat a lomo baguette the size of a rugby ball, and leave at dawn. Stay longer than one night and you’ll notice the things they miss: the way the pine needles deaden every footstep, how the horizon seems to roll away for ever, and the fact that the only traffic jam happens when someone stops to talk to the baker and forgets to pull over.

Walking Through Wood Smoke and Wheat

Head north out of the plaza and the tarmac gives way to a sandy track within three minutes. These are the carrascales—plantations of resin pine planted so regularly they look like a giant comb has been dragged across the land. In April the undergrowth smells of thyme and damp bark; by July the ground is powdery and pale, and grasshoppers crackle like faulty radio static. There is no pay-and-display car park, no visitor centre, and only the sporadic yellow-arrow waymark left by the Camino volunteers. Yet the paths are easy to follow: every kilometre or so you’ll pass a stone winepress half-buried in weeds, or a concrete hut where growers once stored maturing cheese. Walk for an hour and you reach the ghost-hamlet of El Campillo—six roofless houses, a bread oven still black with soot, and absolute silence.

Cyclists can loop south-east on the farm track to Villanubla (11 km), where the cereal fields flare green-gold in late spring. The gradient is gentle but the surface is rutted; a hybrid tyre is safer than a skinny road wheel. Take water—there’s no café until the edge of the next village, and the July sun at this altitude burns harder than the thermometer suggests.

Underground Wine and Above-Goard Roast

Alcazaren’s older houses sit on top of hand-dug cellars, recognisable by the brick chimneys poking through the grass like periscopes. Most are locked; families use them as weekend picnic caves rather than tourist attractions. Knock politely and you might be shown a vaulted room lined with century-old tinajas—earthenware vats big enough to bathe in. The wine made now is for home consumption only, poured from an unlabelled plastic bottle at lunch. It tastes of sharp cherries and the iron earth itself, and it will stain your lips purple for the rest of the afternoon.

Food above ground is equally unsubtle but satisfying. The Restaurante Escuela, run by the hospitality college in nearby Peñaflor, opens weekday lunchtimes and offers a three-course menú del día for €12. Expect grilled pork, chips dusted with smoked paprika, and a wobbling flan that could double as ballast. Vegetarians get a roasted red-pepper tortilla—no kale, no quinoa, no apology. At weekends locals drive in for lechazo, milk-fed lamb slow-roasted in clay dishes so the skin crisps into a caramel sheet. Order it for two and you’ll receive half a baby animal; bring an appetite or a doggy bag.

When the Village Closes

Alcazaren has no ATM, no petrol station, and no shop open on Sunday afternoon. The last cash machine is in Peñaflor, 3 km west along the N-601; if you arrive by bus on a Saturday evening, withdraw money before the shutters come down or you’ll be washing dishes to pay for breakfast. Public transport is thin: three ALSA coaches run daily from Valladolid to Peñaflor (35 min, €4.20), after which you walk or phone Taxi Sancho (€8 fixed fare). Hire cars are available at Valladolid airport—40 minutes of empty dual carriageway and you’re parked beside the church.

Accommodation choices are binary. The municipal albergue has eight pristine bunks, a kitchen with mismatched cutlery, and a bathroom that delivers the hottest shower many pilgrims have enjoyed since Burgos. It’s free, but you must sign in at Bar El Rubién and surrender your passport number. Arrive after 2 pm in May–September and you’ll probably find the beds full; phone +34 983 581 015 the night before and the owner will hold a mattress if you sound polite. The alternative is a room in Valladolid—fine if you have wheels, pointless if you’re on foot.

Fiestas, Fires and the Fog of September

Visit in mid-July and you’ll collide with the Fiestas de Santiago. The village swells to three times its size as former residents return from Valladolid and Madrid. A brass band plays pasodobles until two in the morning, teenagers drink calimocho from two-litre bottles, and the plaza becomes an open-air kitchen where morcilla black puddings sizzle on disposable barbecues. It’s loud, smoky, and generous: strangers will hand you a polystyrene cup of wine simply because you’re standing nearby. If you prefer quiet, come in late September when the pine forests drip with dew and the wheat stubble smells of wet straw. Morning fog can be thick enough to hide the church tower; by eleven the sun burns through and the thermometer touches 22 °C—perfect walking weather, though you may need a jumper after four.

Winter is a gamble. At 731 m the village catches the gota fría storms that sweep across the plateau; January nights drop to –5 °C and the albergue heating is switched off to save money. Roads become glassy, and without snow tyres you’ll slide into the ditch long before you reach the pine woods. Unless you’re equipped for cold-weather hiking, postpone until April.

Leaving Without a Souvenir

There is no gift shop. The nearest thing to a souvenir is the stamp you’ll get in your pilgrim passport if you ask the barman nicely—he keeps the rubber stamp beside the coffee machine, ink pad dried to a fossil. Slip it between the pages, finish your café con leche, and walk south past the last pine row. Behind you the tractor starts up again, the same one that woke you. Alcazaren returns to being a working village that happens to lie on an ancient path, rather than a path that happens to have a village. That, more than any castle, is what makes it worth the detour.