Camarma de Esteruelas

The church bell strikes two and the pavement tables at Bar la Plaza fill in five minutes flat. Office workers in hi-vis vests queue beside retired farmers in flat caps, all after the same €9 menú del día. Nobody checks Google Maps; they know the croquetas run out by half past. This is Camarma de Esteruelas at lunchtime, a commuter village that still eats like a farm.

A 45-Minute Hop from the Capital, Fifty Years Slower

Leave Madrid at eleven and you can be circulating the single-lane ring road by noon. The A-2 slides past IKEA warehouses and logistics parks, then thins to two lanes. Wheat suddenly outnumbers cars. At 634 metres the air feels cleaner, though the Sierra is still a bruise on the horizon. Camarma sits on a gentle swell of meseta, halfway between the Henares river and the airport flight path. You will hear aircraft more often than tractors, yet the place keeps the rhythm of sowing and harvest. Weekday mornings start with espresso and field reports in the bakery; evenings end with dominoes and anisette once the tv weather finishes.

The altitude matters. In May the nights drop to 10 °C even when Madrid swelters at 30 °C. Frost can arrive six weeks earlier than in the capital, so wheat, barley and sunflowers dominate the rotation rather than vegetables. Come July the cereal stubble turns a pale gold that photographs like a government tourism advert, but bring a hat: there is no shade on the agricultural tracks and the nearest tree is often a lone holm oak planted as a field marker a century ago.

What Passes for a Centre

Plaza de la Constitución is a triangle, not a square. The ayuntamiento occupies a low 1970s block painted municipal cream; opposite, the Iglesia de San Pedro Apóstol rises in uneven stone. Start there. The oldest blocks are ochre limestone, pitted and warm; newer repairs use cheaper brick the colour of estate agents' trousers. The blend is honest – Camarma never had a golden age to freeze in. Walk three streets north and you reach 1990s terraced houses with satellite dishes trained on Premier League football. Walk south and the pavement gives way to a dirt track between sunflower plots. The transition takes ninety seconds.

Inside the church, the guide leaflet (50 c) lists bishops back to 1578 but skips the bit where the tower collapsed in 1941 and was rebuilt lower. Look up and the mismatch is obvious: the belfry sits slightly off-centre, like a cap pushed back after a siesta. The retable is neo-baroque, gilded enough to satisfy Sunday worshippers but not worth nicking. What you remember later is the smell – incense mixed with floor polish and the faint sweetness of wilted gladioli.

Eating on Spanish Time, Paying Castilian Prices

British stomachs note the schedule: kitchens open 13:30–16:00, close, reopen 21:00–23:00. Turn up at five and you will get crisps and a lukewarm coffee. The safest plan is an early lunch straight off the bus.

Try Asador El Parral on Calle Real. Order the chuletón for two (€28 pp) and they bring a rib-eye the size of a steering wheel, charred outside, almost blue within if you ask. Chips arrive free in a separate bowl, thick-cut and salted like Spanish cinema popcorn. House red is Valdepeñas, €9 a bottle, gentle enough for a Tuesday. Vegetarians get a grilled piquillo-pepper stuffed with goat's cheese; it costs €8 and feels like an afterthought, which it is.

Pudding? The kitchen bakes its own torrijas – bread soaked in cinnamon milk, fried, then drizzled with honey. Think posh eggy bread crossed with bread-and-butter pudding. One portion feeds two; the waistband will tell you afterwards.

If the budget is tighter, Bar la Plaza does a plato combinado: half a roast chicken, chips, fried egg and lettuce for €7.50. Pay cash – the card machine exists but the owner keeps it unplugged "to save the planet".

A Walk That Won't Require Walking Boots

From the church door head west on Calle del Olmo until asphalt turns to gravel. You have joined the Camino de Santiago local branch, though nobody carries scallop shells here. The path follows a low ridge between wheat fields; skylarks rise and fall like punctuation. After 25 minutes the track dips to an irrigation canal shaded by poplars – the only place within 5 km where you can escape the sun. Turn back when you reach the motorway embankment; the roar of lorries drowns out the larks and reminds you Madrid is closer than it feels.

Total distance: 4 km. Total ascent: negligible. Stiles: zero. You will share the route with dog-walkers, joggers and the occasional tractor spraying fungicide – step aside and they wave.

Cyclists can extend the loop south towards Loeches. The road is empty but unshaded; take two bottles in summer because the only bar en route opens at the weekend.

When the Village Lets Its Hair Down

Fiestas de San Pedro, the last weekend in June, turn the fairground into a neon canyon. A cover band murders "Wonderwall" while teenagers clutch gin-and-tonics the size of goldfish bowls. The British visitor's reward is Saturday lunchtime: the paella gigante. Volunteers stir a pan two metres wide in the square, add rabbit and saffron, then ladle portions free to anyone holding a plastic plate. The queue starts at 13:00; food runs out by 14:30 even though the posters claim "until finished". Bring your own fork – they never have enough.

In December the lights switch to belén mode. Nativity scenes pop up inside the bank, the chemist, even the butcher's. Look for the caganet – the Catalan figurine answering the call of nature behind a bush. Camarma embraces the joke with school-boy glee; parents nudge children to spot the tiny trousers round his ankles.

The Honest Catch

Camarma will not make the cover of a travel magazine. The medieval core is postage-stamp size and the high street has more estate agents than artisan bakeries. Monday is still closing day; show up then and the place feels abandoned except for the petrol station and a vending-machine bar where truckers watch MotoGP. Summer afternoons are ovens; winter wind whistles across the plateau and sneaks under every scarf.

What the village offers is a reset button 45 minutes from the airport. Spend two hours, a twenty-note note and you have walked fields, eaten better beef than most London gastropubs serve, and overheard grandparents arguing about rainfall statistics. Nobody will try to sell you an "authentic souvenir" because there aren't any. That, oddly, is what makes the stop worthwhile.

Catch the 15:45 bus back to Madrid and you will be in Avenida de América before the city traffic peaks. The contrast feels sharper leaving than arriving – proof the excursion worked.