San Adrián

The irrigation gates open at six. Water rushes down the acequias, and within minutes the lanes on the western edge of San Adrián smell of wet earth and young lettuce. No church bell, no car horn, announces the day; the sound of water does it instead. This is a town that still runs on vegetable time, 315 metres above sea level but flat as a billiard table, wedged between the mountain walls of northern Navarra and the baking Ebro basin.

British drivers who leave the AP-15 at kilometre 86 expect another hill-top maze of cobbles. What they find is grid-pattern streets, low stone houses with wooden doors painted the colour of sangria dregs, and a main square that doubles as a tractor turning circle. The topography matters: you can stride from one side of town to the other in twelve minutes without breaking sweat, a blessing in July when the plain tops 38 °C and the tar bubbles between the paving stones.

A Morning Circuit

Start early. The Church of San Adrián Mártir unlocks at nine; the caretaker leaves the key in a perforated tobacco tin on the side altar if he nips out for coffee. Inside, the nave is cool enough to store wine, which is handy because the priest once allowed local growers to stack barrels here during the Civil War. Look up and you’ll spot a Renaissance arch that the guidebooks call “transitional”; the builders simply called it Tuesday, borrowing stone from a ruined pilgrim hospital up the road.

From the church door it is three minutes to the conservas museum, lodged in a 1930s cannery. The exhibition is one room, smelling faintly of tin and brine, with a conveyor belt you can switch on if you ask nicely. Weekday entry is €3; on Thursdays they throw in a tasting of white asparagus and piquillo peppers that costs twice as much in Borough Market. The woman at the till speaks English learned from a pen-friend in Swindon and will insist you try the octopus in paprika oil, even at ten in the morning.

By eleven the sun is high enough to send you hunting for shade. Calle San Francisco has the best overhangs: stone houses built by merchants who sold wool to French smugglers, now occupied by dentists and insurance brokers. Peer through the grilles and you may see courtyards planted with orange trees in wooden tubs, the fruit left to rot because nobody can eat thirty oranges a day.

Eating Between Shifts

Lunch is serious. Restaurants open at 13:30; if you arrive after 14:15 the waiters will already be hoovering crumbs before siesta. Restobar América 5 does a chuletón for two that arrives pre-sliced, salted only on the crust, a civilised way round the usual Spanish roulette of raw-or-leather. The house red is from Bodegas Gurpegui Muga, three streets away, and costs €14 a bottle – less than a single glass of their export label in Manchester.

Vegetarians survive on menestra, a spring stew of artichoke, pea and asparagus that changes with whatever is stacked in the wholesale market in nearby Tudela. Ask for “poco sal” if you’re watching blood pressure; local cooks still season as if the salt-tax hasn’t been repealed.

Everything shuts at 17:00. Plan accordingly: the cashpoint is inside a bank whose metal grille clatters down with Germanic punctuality. If you need petrol, the 24-hour station is on the ring-road; the card reader refuses foreign chips about once every three attempts, so keep €50 in notes for ransom.

Flat Trails, Big Sky

The agricultural roads west of town are perfect for an easy bike loop. Hire is €15 a day from the hardware shop opposite the health centre; they lend you a helmet patched with electrical tape and directions scrawled on the back of a fertiliser receipt. Head south along the irrigation ditch for 5 km and you reach a wooden viewing platform built over a heron colony. The birds arrive in March, just as the almond blossom drifts across the path like confetti with nowhere to go.

Walkers can follow the GR-99 long-distance path that threads between vineyards and kiwi plantations – an incongruous crop introduced by a farmer who holidayed in New Zealand in 1988. The route is ruler-flat, but carry water: summer humidity is low and dehydration creeps up while you’re still feeling smug about the temperature on your phone.

When the Plain Parties

Fiestas begin on the last weekend of August. The town swells by 3,000 visitors, most sleeping in campervans that line the football pitch. Mornings start with a peña breakfast: chorizo cooked in cider, served from dustbinsized pots at nine. By eleven the brass bands march; by midday the bull-runs start, half-mile sprints down fenced streets wide enough for a tractor but now full of teenagers in designer trainers. The barriers are high, the bulls smaller than those in Pamplona, and the crowd less drunk. British onlookers report feeling “safe but not sanitised”, a novelty for anyone who has winced through San Fermín.

Evenings end in the plaza with rock covers and more cider. Earplugs help: Spanish bands believe volume compensates for tuning. Accommodation quadruples in price; book six months ahead or stay in Tudela and drive back on the well-lit dual carriageway, dodging the occasional escaped heifer.

Winter Reversal

Come December the plain inverts. Fog pools so thick you can’t see the church tower from the square, and temperatures hover just above freezing. Many restaurants close; the ones that stay open light wood stoves that flavour every dish with a hint of smoke. This is the season for cardoons – a thistle relative that tastes like engineered celery – and for young red wines that never make it onto export lists. The winery will still give you a tour if you email first; tastings are held in the barrel room where the thermometer reads 12 °C, so bring a jumper.

Snow is rare, but the passes north towards Pamplona close at the first flurry. Check traffic apps before setting out: a five-centimetre dusting that would paralyse London is enough for Spanish police to ban trailers and caravans.

Last Orders

San Adrián will not change your life. It offers no Insta-moment cathedral, no cliff-edge castle, no artisan gelato in flavours you can’t pronounce. What it does give you is a working calendar: asparagus in April, bull-runs in August, grape harvest in September, fog in December. Turn up with time to spare, Spanish loose change and a tolerance for 14:00 lunches, and the town slots you neatly into its rhythm. Miss the slots and you’ll be staring at metal shutters, listening to the irrigation water rush past while you wait for the next opening hour.