Walk the ridge of windmills above the town and go inside one that still has its machinery

Go into the castle and work out what the Grand Priory of Castile and León was run from it

Find out who Juan José de Austria was and what he did to the palace here

Work out what was lost on 22 September 1809 when the Order's archive burned

Come in late October for the saffron festival, which is the other thing this town does

In 1183 Alfonso VIII, with the approval of Pope Lucius III, gave Consuegra to the Sovereign Order of the Hospital of St John, which made it the head of the Grand Priory of Castile and León in La Mancha, took the castle as its seat and granted the town a charter copied from Cuenca's. Juan José de Austria, natural son of Philip IV, lived here as grand prior and rebuilt the palace. On 22 September 1809 the French beat the duke of Alburquerque outside the town and burned much of the Order's archive. The windmills on the ridge above are what everyone comes for.

Consuegra: The Windmill Ridge and the Knights of St John

Come in late October and watch a field being picked at first light before the flowers open too far

Sit in on a monda and try stripping the three red stigmas out of a flower yourself

Find out why it is toasted over low heat rather than sun-dried, and what that does to the safranal

Go to the Fiesta de la Rosa del Azafrán at Consuegra, which is built around exactly this

Learn why real saffron is sold in strands and never ground, and what ground saffron usually is

Saffron is the three red stigmas of a crocus, picked out of the flower by hand, and it takes an enormous number of flowers to make a kilo — which is the whole reason for the price. In La Mancha the flowers open for a few weeks in late October, are picked at dawn before they wilt, and are stripped the same day in an operation called the monda. The strands are then toasted slowly over low heat rather than dried in the sun, which is what gives Manchego saffron its aroma, its safranal content and its colouring power. It is sold only in strands, never ground.

Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice in the World, Picked by Hand

Stand in the middle of the Plaza Mayor and work out that the galleries are seating, not decoration

Work out the three uses it was built for: market, religious drama and bulls

Find the Hospitaller gateway and work out what the order was doing in a town on this road

Work out why the town is where it is — the old royal road from Madrid to Andalusia runs through it

Come when the square is in use rather than empty, which is when it makes sense

Tembleque's Plaza Mayor is a rectangle ringed on three levels by open wooden galleries on stone columns, built in the 17th century, and it is the finest surviving example of the Manchegan plaza — a form designed as a multi-purpose space for markets, religious drama and bulls, with the galleries as the seating. It is still used for all three. The town also has a Hospitaller priory gateway and it sits on the old royal road from Madrid to Andalusia, which is why a village this size has a square this good.

Tembleque: A Plaza Mayor of Wooden Galleries

Walk the boardwalks out across the tablas and work out what a tabla fluvial actually is

Work out why it forms here: two rivers meeting on flat ground with almost nowhere to drain

Count wildfowl from the hides — over two thousand species live in the park

Find out what happened to the aquifer underneath and what the 2007 complaint to UNESCO said

Decide for yourself whether a wetland that depends on groundwater can survive irrigated farming around it

Tablas fluviales form where a river spills over its own banks in its middle course on almost flat ground with nowhere to drain, and Las Tablas de Daimiel — at the meeting of the Guadiana and the Cigüela — is one of the last surviving examples of that ecosystem anywhere. Over two thousand species live in it. It is also in serious trouble: the aquifer underneath has been over-pumped for irrigation for decades, and in 2007 four conservation organisations complained to UNESCO that La Mancha Húmeda and Daimiel in particular had degraded to the point of losing the values they were listed for.

Las Tablas de Daimiel: A Wetland Being Drained

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

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 Botica de los Jimeno and look at a 17th-century pharmacy still fitted out as it was

Find the Gothic rollo in the middle of the square and work out what a jurisdictional pillar was for

Go into the Palacio de Avellaneda and find the carved coffered ceilings

Climb to the castle, originally built by Fernán González in the 10th century

Work out why a village this size has a square and a palace on this scale

Fernán González built a castle here in the 10th century as part of the repopulation, and it was completely rebuilt in the 15th. Below it the Plaza Mayor holds the Palacio de Avellaneda and, in the middle of the square, a Gothic rollo — the jurisdictional pillar that marked a town's right to administer justice — protected since 3 June 1931. The other thing to find is the Botica de los Jimeno, a 17th-century pharmacy still fitted out as it was, with its jars and its dispensary, now a museum and protected since 20 March 2007.

Peñaranda de Duero: A Renaissance Palace and a 17th-Century Pharmacy

Get to a hide at El Hondo at first light, which is when the ducks are on the open water

Look for marbled teal and white-headed duck, two species that nearly went and largely did not

Work out that these reservoirs were built for irrigation and became a reserve by accident

Go across to the Santa Pola salinas for the flamingos and the waders

Work out how the three wetlands function as one system for birds moving through

El Hondo, the Santa Pola salinas and the La Mata and Torrevieja lagoons form a triangle of wetlands on the Alicante coast that is critical to the biological cycles of a very large number of birds — on migration, breeding and wintering. El Hondo is the freshwater end of it, a set of reservoirs and reedbeds built for irrigation that turned into one of the most important bird sites in Spain, and it holds one of the few reliable populations of marbled teal and white-headed duck in Europe, both of which came close to disappearing.