Ávila announces itself from a long way off, a tawny line of granite wall on a bare plateau with the snowy edge of the Sierra de Gredos behind it. At roughly eleven hundred metres it is the highest provincial capital in Spain, and you feel that in the air: bright, thin, and cold enough in winter that frost on the approach roads is a real hazard even when the sun is out.
The walls are the point. Built from the end of the eleventh century as the Christian kingdoms pushed south, they run for about two and a half kilometres with eighty-odd towers and a handful of gates, and they are among the best-preserved medieval defences in Europe. You can walk part of the circuit on top. For the photograph everyone wants, ride out across the river Adaja to the viewpoint known as Los Cuatro Postes, where the whole city lines up in the evening light like a stage set.
Ávila was also home to Teresa, the sixteenth-century mystic, reformer and writer, and the town sells her in sweet form: yemas, little sugared egg-yolk confections that are worth buying even if you are not sweet-toothed. The savoury answer is chuletón, an enormous cut of local beef, usually shared and served very rare, which makes a lunch that you will need a siesta to survive.
For the riding, you are on the meseta, high, open and windy, with long straight roads through cereal fields and scattered holm oaks. The fun starts to the south, where the road climbs into the Gredos and the corners tighten, the surface mostly good and traffic light outside August. Mornings can be chilly even in summer, so keep a layer in the top box.
Practically, this is a proper city of fifty-odd thousand, so fuel, cash machines and parking by the walls are all easy. Park outside the gates and walk in; the old streets inside are cobbled, narrow and sometimes closed to vehicles. Give yourself an hour for the walls and another for a long, slow lunch.