Laguardia — the walled village

Laguardia is a walled oval about four hundred metres long, entered through medieval gates, with two main streets and a network of lanes between them. Traffic is banned inside because there are hundreds of family wine cellars dug under the houses and the vaults will not take the weight — which leaves the whole village quiet and empty of parked cars at any hour of the day.

The set piece is the doorway of Santa María de los Reyes, a fourteenth-century Gothic portal that kept its original polychrome paint because a later porch enclosed and protected it. It is behind a locked screen and visits are by guided tour at fixed times; the rest of the church square works without one.

The walls are the other half. The path around the outside gives the vines running flat to the horizon on the south side and the grey wall of the Sierra de Cantabria to the north, and the towers — Abacial and the clock tower — give height inside.

Parking is outside the gates and the village is small enough to cover on foot in an hour. Summer afternoons are hot on the exposed walls; early morning and the last two hours are when the sandstone warms up and the sierra takes light. Winter mornings often start with fog on the plain below.