Ciudad Real

It takes about 3 and a half hours to drive from Cordoba to Toledo on the excellent Spanish roads. We left Cordoba at about 12:30pm and expected to arrive in Toledo at about 4:00pm. However, we were dirving along the motorway and two things coincided - we had to stop for petrol and we did so in sight of a very spectacular old fortress on a hill with old windmills surrounding it.

After filling the car with unleaded fuel, we could not resist finding the way up the hill towards the fort. In doing so we passed through a beautiful little Spanish town called Consuegra. The fortress dates back to Roman and Muslim times.

The fortress and the windmills are actually famous. The fort is the home of the Order of Knights of St John of Jerusalem (Hospitallers) from 1197. Before that, in 1097, Diego, son of Mia Cid, lost his life defending the fort against the invading Muslims.

This town is also the territory of the fictional figure Don Quixote, as described by author Miguel de Cervantes in 1615 in what is considered to be the world's first novel. It was entitled Don Quixote of La Mancha. La Mancha is the Spanish area we drove through today, and it literally means 'the dry land' in Arabic, because it is so dry in the summer months.

The fort was amazing - a real medieval fortress with towers, long rooms, prisons, cisterns for water, 5m thick walls, a drawbridge, and much more. There was even a chest containing swords and a shield, which Sam immediately picked up and wielded dangerously. There was also an area within the walls into which villagers could flee and bring their cattle, sheep and horses and keep them safe in the event of an attacking army. The main cistern was huge and could have supplied water to the fort for months.

The windmills date from the 16th century and they are amazing examples of how medieval people milled grain when water was not able to be reliably used to turn wheels and millstones. The huge windmills have huge millstones within them which are ingeniously designed for milling grain. We could climb up inside one of them and see the extraordinary oak wooden mechanisms inside for milling the grain.

The stop at Consuegra was well worth it, even though we didn't end up pulling into Toledo until about 6 pm.Read more