Walk between several of the sixteen lagoons and find the tufa barriers each one spills over

Work out how the barriers formed: the water itself deposits the rock that dams it

Go down into the Cueva de Montesinos, which Cervantes lowers Don Quixote into

Find the castle of Peñarroya and the ruins of Rochafrida inside the park

Swim in one of the permitted lagoons, and work out why swimming is not permitted in all of them

Sixteen pools run down the valley of the Guadiana Viejo, separated and connected by barriers of tufa and travertine that the water itself has deposited, so each lagoon spills into the next over a natural dam of its own making. They are a natural park spread across five municipalities in a landscape that has almost no other surface water. Inside the park are the castle of Peñarroya, the ruins of Rochafrida, and the Cueva de Montesinos, the cave Don Quixote is lowered into in the novel.

The Lagunas de Ruidera

Go into the convent of Santo Domingo and find Quevedo's connection with the town

Read the opening line of Don Quixote and then find out why Francisco Parra Luna's Complutense team put it here in 2004

Work out how contested that claim is, and which other towns say the same thing

Walk the Plaza Mayor and the Renaissance streets around it

Read something of Quevedo where he died, and work out what he was actually like

Villanueva de los Infantes was a serious cultural centre of the Golden Age — Quevedo, Cervantes and Lope de Vega are all associated with it, along with Thomas of Villanova and the humanist Bartolomé Jiménez Patón. It was declared a historic-artistic ensemble in 1974, and in 2004 a Complutense team led by the sociologist Francisco Parra Luna — himself from the town — concluded that this is the unnamed lugar de la Mancha that Cervantes refuses to identify in the first line of Don Quixote. The claim is contested, which is half the fun of it.

Villanueva de los Infantes: Where Quevedo Died

Visit the Museo del Queso Manchego in Manzanares, Ciudad Real

Taste Manchego at three ages side by side: Semicurado (three weeks to four months), Curado (three to six months) and Viejo (one to two years), all made only from Manchega sheep's milk

Look for the embossed woven-esparto pattern on the rind, left by the traditional grass baskets

Buy an artesano Manchego, the label reserved for cheese made from raw milk

Manchego is made only from the milk of Manchega sheep, a breed that can live on the dry plateau of La Mancha, and it is pressed in moulds that leave a herringbone pattern on the rind — the mark of the esparto grass baskets it was traditionally wrapped in. The age is what changes it: semicurado is mild and springy, curado is firmer and nuttier, viejo at one to two years is hard, sharp and crystalline. Tasting the three side by side is the only way to understand why the label matters.

Manzanares: Manchego at Three Ages

Go into the wine museum in its 19th-century bodega and stand next to a tinaja three metres high

Work out what a tinaja does that a barrel does not, and why La Mancha used them

Find out what Cencibel and Airén actually are, and how much Airén there is in this one region

Work out the trade: carts of wine up the royal road to Madrid, in volume, for two centuries

Taste a modern Valdepeñas against the reputation and decide whether the reputation is out of date

Valdepeñas was the wine that Madrid actually drank — carted up the royal road in huge quantities from the 18th century onwards, cheap, light and reliable, and fermented in enormous earthenware tinajas that stood two or three metres high. The town's wine museum is in a working 19th-century bodega with the tinajas still in place. The grape is Cencibel, which is Tempranillo again under another local name, with Airén for the whites — Airén being, by planted area, one of the most widely grown white grapes in the world, almost all of it here.

Valdepeñas: The Wine That Fed Madrid

Walk the Sierra de los Molinos and find the Burleta, the Infanto and the Sardinero — the three that are genuinely 16th century

Go inside a working mill and watch the mechanism turn the sails into stone on grain

Read chapter eight of Don Quixote standing where it is set

Walk down into the Albaicín quarter below the ridge, whitewashed with blue paintwork

Come at sunset, when the mills and the plain do the thing everyone comes for

Don Quixote charges the windmills in chapter eight, and the ridge above Campo de Criptana is where Cervantes is held to have got them. Ten mills stand on the Sierra de los Molinos, and three of them — the Burleta, the Infanto and the Sardinero — are 16th-century originals rather than reconstructions. The town runs down the slope beneath them from the Albaicín quarter, whitewashed with blue doors. It is the single most recognisable image of La Mancha, and it is worth working out what a windmill of that date actually did.

Campo de Criptana: The Giants

Go into the Casa de Dulcinea and work out what a 16th-century Manchegan house actually contained

Find the library of Don Quixote in over sixty languages and see which heads of state sent which

Read the chapter where Quixote and Sancho get lost in these streets at night, standing in them

Work out the oddity: a real village living with the identity of a character who was herself imagined by a character

Walk out into the vines and olives around it, which is what the Mancha actually looks like

Cervantes gave Don Quixote's imagined lady a home village, and it is this one — Dulcinea del Toboso, in a place that already existed and has been living with it ever since. The town has a Casa de Dulcinea, a 16th-century Manchegan house furnished as she might have kept it, and a library of Don Quixote in more than sixty languages, many of them presented by heads of state. There is also a chapter in the book where Quixote and Sancho blunder about these streets at night unable to find the house, which is worth reading in situ.

El Toboso: Dulcinea's Village

Go round the old works and work out what the site had to have: water, timber, calamine and copper, all in one valley

Find out who Juan Jorge Graubner was and what Charles III gave him permission to build in 1772

Walk up to the Nacimiento del Río Mundo and see a river come straight out of a cliff

Find out what the reventón is and what conditions have to line up for it

Walk the Calares del Mundo y de la Sima park above, which is the limestone country the water comes through

In 1772 Charles III gave royal permission to the Austrian engineer Juan Jorge Graubner to build brass works at Riópar — the Reales Fábricas de Bronce y Latón de San Juan de Alcaraz, the first brass and bronze factory in Spain and the second in Europe after Goslar in Germany. The site was chosen for what it had beside it: running water, timber, and a calamine deposit for the zinc, with copper for the alloy. A whole industrial village grew with it and worked for two centuries. Above the village the Mundo river comes out of the mountain at the Nacimiento del Río Mundo, a cave mouth in a limestone cirque with a waterfall dropping from it, which in the right conditions blows out in a phenomenon called the reventón.