After the Quijote Maratón: Almagro

The Route: Ciudad Real → Almagro → Ciudad Real Logistics: Taxi or bus, about 25 to 30 minutes each way across the plain. A short, flat day in one of La Mancha's best-kept towns. Marathon Month: October Duration: Day trip

Ciudad Real ──(25-30 mins taxi or bus)──> Almagro ──(25-30 mins)──> Ciudad Real

The Quijote Maratón is two laps of Ciudad Real's ring roads and avenues. Almagro, 23 km to the south-east, is what those roads lead to: a town the Order of Calatrava made its capital, rich enough in the sixteenth century to host the German Fugger bankers, and small enough to see on foot in a morning without climbing anything.

October in Almagro is the quiet after the summer. The international classical theatre festival that fills the town every July is long over, the plain is stubble and vineyard after the harvest, and in most years the days are dry and mild enough to eat outside at midday.

Almagro is 23 km from Ciudad Real, about 25 to 30 minutes by road. Buses run between the two, and some regional trains stop at Almagro station on the line south from Ciudad Real, but services are sparse on a Monday; check the times at renfe.com and with the bus operator the day before, or agree a return time with a taxi.

The Corral de Comedias

The Corral de Comedias opens off the Plaza Mayor. Built in the early seventeenth century as an inn yard with galleries, it is the only playhouse of its kind from the Spanish Golden Age to survive intact, with its wooden balconies, stage and well, and it still stages plays. Visits are guided or self-guided with an audio track and take about 30 minutes. The yard is level; the upper galleries are reached by wooden stairs, which can be skipped.

Tickets are a few euros; buy them at the Corral's own office or website, and check the opening days, since some monuments in Almagro close on Mondays.

The Museo Nacional del Teatro, in a former palace of the Order of Calatrava a short walk away, covers the history of Spanish theatre with costumes, set models and posters, all indoors.

The Plaza Mayor

The Plaza Mayor is long and rectangular, lined on both sides by two-storey arcades with glazed galleries painted green above stone columns. It is completely flat, and the arcades give shade and café tables along its whole length. Beyond it, the streets of whitewashed houses with coats of arms over the doors are also level, leading to the churches and convents of the old town.

Almagro's pickled aubergines, berenjenas de Almagro, seasoned with cumin and paprika and fastened with a stick of fennel, are sold in jars in the shops around the square and served in every bar. A plate of them with Manchego cheese is lunch.

Return to Ciudad Real by the same bus or taxi.