Look up in Salamanca and you will see storks. Their huge nests, bundles of sticks the size of armchairs, sit on church towers, convent roofs and any chimney that will hold them, and from late winter the whole old town is full of the sound of bill-clattering. The area around the church of San Cristóbal, on the edge of the old centre, is a good place to notice them, with the stone of the church and its neighbours set against a big Castilian sky. It is a modest church in a city of grand ones, but the quiet streets around it give a taste of daily life away from the tourist route.
The city's stone is the thing that sets it apart. It is a warm golden sandstone from the quarries at nearby Villamayor, soft enough to carve into elaborate decoration and hard enough to last for centuries, and it changes colour through the day, from pale honey at noon to deep amber at sunset. It is also easily marked, which is why the older churches show weathering and the newer buildings seem sharp. A walk through the lanes around San Cristóbal shows many different ages of stonework, repair and rebuilding, and the city seems to be a patchwork quilt of centuries.
The plains around Salamanca are good riding for anyone who likes space. The roads run straight and long across the Meseta, with views of wheat fields, pasture and dehesa, the open woodland of holm oak where Iberian pigs and fighting bulls graze. Corners are rare, but the sky and the horizon make up for them, and in spring the green fields are strewn with poppies. If you want curves, the hills of the Sierra de Francia and the Sierra de Béjar lie to the south, an hour or so away. Weather is dry and bright most of the year, with very hot summers and frosty winters.
Fuel is not a problem in a city of more than one hundred and fifty thousand, and Santa Marta de Tormes and Carbajosa de la Sagrada have stations and supermarkets on the ring roads. A good tip is to eat late, since Spanish lunch begins after two and dinner after nine. The smell of the city, in the morning, is coffee and diesel with a note of baking from the bakeries. Spend some of the evening in the streets, when the stone glows and the swifts circle the towers.