Alaejos

The bells stop at ten. Not because the clock is broken, but because no one is still wandering the square. By half past nine the single supermarket has pulled its metal shutter, the chemist’s blind is down, and even the stray cats seem to clock off. Stand on the stone bench in Plaza Mayor, look up, and the only light comes from the Gothic-Mudéjar tower of Santa María, pale against a sky so wide it feels slightly sarcastic. This is Alaejos, 1,380 souls parked on a limestone ridge 754 m above sea level, halfway between Valladolid and the Portuguese border, and the silence is not marketing copy—it is simply what happens when the wind drops.

A Town that Dug its Own Cellars

Every house here sits on top of its own cave. Generations scraped tunnels into the bedrock to keep wine at 14 °C year-round; some galleries drop three storeys, linked by rough stairs that smell of damp chalk and old oak. A torch beam picks out dates—1786, 1834—scratched into the walls beside masons’ marks that look like crooked crosses. There is no ticket booth, no audio guide. Ask in the bar opposite the town hall and the barman will finish his coffee, fetch a key the size of a tractor crank, and lead you down a spiral hatch in the pavement. Admission is usually a fiver; bring exact coins because the till is a jam jar. British visitors expecting a Rioja-style theme park tend to leave startled: the attraction is literally under their feet and the only soundtrack is dripping water and the squeak of bats.

Back on the surface the streets map the same grid laid out in the 1470s after the Count of Benavente stamped his coat of arms on the place. The palace of the Águila family still leans over Calle Real, its corner balcony built like a stone pulpit so the lords could harangue traders without muddying their boots. Peer through the iron grille and you’ll spot a Renaissance wellhead in the courtyard; the town’s tourist board (open Tuesday and Thursday, sometimes) claims it inspired a similar feature in the alcázar of Segovia. Hyperbole, maybe, but the carving is sharp enough to make the journey believable.

What the Meseta Tastes Like

Castilla y León is routinely described as Spain’s “empty interior”; Alaejos proves the cliché half right. Wheat fields circle the town in every direction, a blond ocean that turns silver when the wind cuts across it. Walk twenty minutes south on the dirt track signed “Ermita Virgen de Villalón” and you’ll pass vines trained on low wire trellises—the local workhorse variety is Tempranillo, but the whites are Verdejo, the grape that makes Rueda zing. Most growers sell to the cooperative on the edge of town; pop in on a weekday morning and the manager will rinse out a plastic tulip glass and let you taste last year’s tank sample. The rosé is the colour of onion skin and tastes like strawberries left in the fridge overnight: oddly moreish, dangerously easy at 12.5 %. Expect to pay €3.50 a bottle if you lug away a crate; they’ll even find an old Real Madrid carton to carry it in.

Food follows the same no-frills logic. Lunch at the mesón under the arcades is a three-act affair: bowl of garlic soup thickened with egg, slab of roast suckling pig the size of a paperback, and a half-bottle of local red that arrives with the foil already peeled back. The crackling shatters like a crème-brûlée lid; the meat beneath is mild, closer to chicken thigh than to pork belly—useful knowledge if you’re travelling with children who balk at “piglet”. Vegetarians get a break in the form of chickpea stew with spinach and cumin; it is not on the printed menu, you have to ask, and the waitress will look momentarily confused, then disappear into the kitchen and return triumphant with a bowl big enough for two. Price for the lot: €14. Cash only; the card machine has been “broken since last summer”.

Wednesday is Market, July is Bulls

The weekly market sets up before eight. Stallholders from Medina del Campo unload crates of peppers and knock-off Moroccan strawberries while farm wives heft pillowcases of hardy lettuce seed. British self-caterers can stock up on manchego at €12 a kilo—ask for “curado” if you want the punchy stuff that survives a three-day drive home in a cool box. By noon the square is swept clean again, leaving only the smell of lettuce trimmings and the odd plastic glove trodden into the cobbles.

Come late June the plaza fills with portable railings and a temporary bullring. Fiestas de San Pedro mean brass bands that rehearse at two in the morning, children riding tractors draped in bunting, and one afternoon when the whole town watches six fighting bulls test the fence. You don’t have to attend; if you prefer your sleep, book a room on the north side of the village where the music is muffled by grain silos. Accommodation is limited anyway: two small guesthouses, both spotless, both €45 a double including toast and instant coffee. British bikers following the regional motorbike trails praise the beds but warn that checkout is 09:30 sharp; the landlady needs the sheets back in the tumble-dryer before mass.

Getting Lost on Purpose

Alaejos is compact enough to explore in an hour, yet the surrounding grid of farm tracks invites aimless circuits. Borrow a bicycle from the hotel and head west into the pine plantation at Dehesa de Alaejos; after 4 km the tarmac gives way to white gravel, and red kites start circling overhead. In April the undergrowth is lavender-blue with viper’s bugloss; by late September the vines turn traffic-light red and farmers burn the cuttings at dusk, sending sweet smoke across the road. Take a jacket—at this altitude the breeze is rarely polite, and a 30 °C afternoon can collapse into a 12 °C dusk without warning.

Winter arrives early. The first frost usually lands in mid-October; January nights drop to -8 °C and the bodega tunnels become communal fridges for sides of beef hung on iron hooks. If you insist on travelling then, bring proper boots: the meseta wind whistles straight from the Cantabrian mountains and the stone streets turn into an ice rink. Snow is rare but fog is not; morning visibility can shrink to two lamp posts, making that Gothic tower loom like something from a MR James tale.

When to Clock Off

British visitors tend to treat Alaejos as a pit stop between Salamanca and Valladolid, a single tick on a list of mudéjar towers. Stay overnight and the rhythm changes. The bar opposite the church fills with farmers who still measure rainfall by the finger and argue about EU subsidy forms. Order a caña and you’ll be asked which part of England, whether you know anyone in Benidorm, and if it’s true that English beer is served warm. Answers on a postcard, preferably posted before the last collection at 18:30.

Leave early, and the only sound is the click of swallow wings under the eaves. The tower catches the first sun and glows the colour of burnt cream; for five minutes the whole town looks like a studio set, until a delivery van rattles in from the main road and normality reboots. No one will insist you linger, but the meseta has a habit of slowing engines. The N-122 back towards Valladolid is straight enough to hypnotise; drivers find themselves indicating for Alaejos again, pulled in by the promise of another glass of that onion-skin rosé and the certainty that, somewhere beneath their feet, a kilometre of silent tunnels still breathes wine into the dark.