Mota del Cuervo sits at the heart of La Mancha, the flat, sun-baked plateau that Cervantes made immortal in Don Quixote. The town's most iconic sight — a line of seven white windmills silhouetted against the sky on a long ridge — is exactly the kind of landscape that fired the imagination of Spain's greatest writer. Standing here, it is easy to understand why a man might mistake turning sails for the arms of a giant.
Beyond the windmills, the surrounding countryside rewards exploration. The nearby town of Belmonte shelters one of the finest Gothic-Mudéjar castles in Spain, and the local craft tradition of pottery making stretches back centuries, still practised and displayed in the town museum.