Torrelaguna

Where the plateau begins to tilt

The 197 bus from Madrid climbs steadily for seventy minutes until the motorway thins out and cereal fields tilt upwards. At 740 metres above sea level, Torrelaguna sits where the Meseta starts to remember it is really a mountain plateau. The air is already cooler than in the capital; on winter mornings the thermometer can lick zero while Gran Vía is still in double figures. In July the difference is less dramatic but welcome all the same—sunlight here bounces off stone instead of concrete, and a breeze slips down from the Sierra de Guadarrama.

Most passengers stay on the platform, waiting for the tiny 913 minibus that continues to the slate-roof village of Patones de Arriba. They see Torrelaguna only as a transit lounge. That is convenient for everyone else: inside the walls you will share the porticoed Plaza Mayor with Saturday shoppers, not coach parties.

A cardinal's footprint you can still walk through

Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, the priest who became Spain's most powerful statesman, was baptised in the Gothic tower that still punctures the skyline. The font is inside the Iglesia de Santa María Magdalena, but the building itself is the real relic: fifteenth-century stone on the outside, Baroque icing within. Admission is free when the doors are open—usually 10-13:00 and 17-19:00, though the caretaker sometimes locks up for lunch earlier than you'd expect.

A discreet plaque on Calle Mayor marks the house where Cisneros was born. No gift shop, no audio guide; just a stone coat of arms and a row of wheelie bins. The convent he later founded for Franciscan nuns is still occupied, its chapel closed to casual visitors, but the brick façade gives a lesson in how little Counter-Reformation architecture has changed in four centuries.

Sections of the thirteenth-century wall survive, though they were never the cinematic kind. Walk through the Puerta del Cristo de Burgos and you are following the same squeeze of medieval traffic that once funnelled mule trains loaded with wheat for the capital. Traffic now is a white van delivering bread sticks and a teenager on a scooter who knows every cobble by heart.

Walking tracks that start at the last house

Turn right at the top of Calle del Castillo and the street dissolves into a farm track. Within ten minutes the cereal plain folds into a shallow valley and you are following the Ruta del Jarama, a way-marked path that keeps the river on your left and fields of oats on your right. The loop is 8 km and almost level—trainers are fine, though the surface is stony enough to punish thin soles. Buzzards wheel overhead; traffic noise fades to the odd pop of a hunter's shotgun somewhere out of sight.

If you want height, the Camino de Patones climbs 350 metres over five kilometres to reach the neighbour everyone photographs. Allow two hours up, one down, and carry water: there is no bar between the two villages and shade is limited to holm-oak clumps. In January the track can be white with frost until midday; in August you need to start early or finish late.

Roast lamb and the Madrid wine that never reaches the UK

Castilian cooking is built for people who have walked behind a plough—or at least hiked the Camino de Patones. Casa Juan, on the corner of Plaza Mayor, does a weekday menú del día for €12: soup or salad, roast lamb that falls off the bone in woolly strips, and a wedge of almond tart. Order a medio vino de la casa and you will get a tumbler of Madrid DO white; it is crisp enough to wake the palate after all that animal fat. Vegetarians can ask for judiones de La Granja, butter beans the size of ten-pence pieces stewed with saffron and tomato.

On market day—Tuesday—stalls spread across the smaller Plaza de la Montera. Try a slice of tarta de chicharrón from the bakery on Calle San Sebastián: the name translates as "pork-fat pie" but the reality is closer to a treacle tart with attitude. Churros arrive at Cafetería California at 07:00, handy if you have caught the dawn bus and need ballast before the monuments open.

Getting stuck, getting out

The last 197 back to Madrid leaves at 20:30 sharp. Miss it and the options shrink to a €70 taxi or persuading someone to drive you to Cercanías station at Alcalá de Henares. Sunday service is skeletal—four buses each way—so arrive early or hire a car. Petrolheads should note that the A-1 is fast but the M-131 exit can queue for twenty minutes on summer Sundays when half of Madrid heads north.

Parking inside the walls is residents-only; outsiders use the signed gravel field five minutes from the centre. It is free and usually half-empty, though fiesta weekends turn it into a scrum of hatchbacks and hunting dogs. The tourist office on Plaza Mayor will sometimes stash a small rucksack for a couple of hours if you ask politely—there is no left-luggage locker at the bus stop.

Free Wi-Fi supposedly blankets the main square, but the network name is taped inside the library door and the password changes whenever someone forgets to unstick the note. Mobile coverage is fine on Vodafone and EE; O2 struggles between the stone arcades.

Seasons, and when not to come

Spring brings green wheat and almond blossom, plus the feast of the Annunciation on 25 March when locals parade a fifteenth-century Virgin around the streets. Temperatures hover in the high teens—perfect for walking—though Easter week itself can be surprisingly crowded; every village organisation wants to carry a float and half of neighbouring Alcalá descends on relatives.

July and August are hot, but the altitude knocks the edge off the worst Madrid furnace hours. The problem is shade: the historic core is built for winter sun, and at 14:00 the stone reflects heat like a grill. Plan indoor time—lunch, the interpretation centre, the church—or follow the Spanish timetable and reappear after 18:00.

Winter is crisp, often bright, and almost empty. Bars still keep their doors open, but you will be the only visitor in sight. Snow proper is rare; ice on the Patones path is not. Bring treaded soles and you can have the views to yourself.

The honest verdict

Torrelaguna is not a place to tick off masterpieces. You can cover the essential sights in under an hour, two if you climb the tower when it is open. What the village offers instead is a slice of working Castile half an hour beyond the capital's orbital motorway: a market that sells bulbs as well as souvenirs, a church whose collection box funds the roof, and bars where the television mutters Saturday football rather than looped flamenco. Use it as a staging post for Patones if you must, but stay for the lamb, the river walk, and the realisation that Madrid province still belongs to the people who live there first and photograph it second.