Illas

The road signs give up before the village begins. One moment you’re circling Avilés’ roundabouts, the next you’re on the AS-237, hedges brushing both wing-mirrors while cows stare like bored traffic wardens. Illas doesn’t leap into view; it leaks out—stone houses, apple trees, a tractor shed—until you realise the sat-nav lady has gone quiet and the only soundtrack is a woodpecker and your own tyres on gravel.

This is Asturias with the volume knob snapped off. The council covers 40 sq km yet holds fewer people than a single Croydon block. Parish boundaries are traced by dry-stone walls and the smell of cut grass; there is no centre, just a scatter of hamlets whose names—La Peral, Callezuela, La Pedrera—appear on cheese wrappers more often than road atlases. The result feels like eavesdropping on somebody else’s afternoon: washing flaps, a radio murmurs, someone is always raking leaves even when there are no leaves left.

What passes for a high street

San Félix church sits at the junction of two lanes wide enough for one Citroën and a donkey. The building is 17th-century in parts, 1970s breeze-block in others; the bell still rings for mass at 11 a.m. on Sundays and the priest arrives from Avilés in a dented SEAT. Step inside and the air is candle-wax and damp hymn books; outside, the cemetery smells of chrysanthemums and freshly turned earth. There is no café on the square—there is no square—so you take your coffee leaning against the bonnet, watching a man in overalls unload cider crates with the unhurried grace of someone who knows tomorrow will be much the same.

Opposite the church a lane tilts uphill past stone granaries on stilts. These are paneras, smaller cousins of the better-known hórreo, built low enough to shoulder a sack of maize without a ladder. Their slate roofs shine like wet fish after rain, and the wood has turned silver-grey, the colour of British beach huts left out too many winters. Look closely and you’ll see maize still hanging in twisted ropes—decoration now, though fifty years ago it meant January dinners.

Cheese, cider and the art of sitting still

Illas produces one celebrity: La Peral, a creamy cow’s-milk blue that punches far above its postcode. The dairy is a bungalow with a brass bell; ring it and the owner appears wiping his hands on a sweatshirt that reads “Real Oviedo”. A half-kilo wedge costs €8, wrapped in waxed paper that quickly becomes translucent with butterfat. Eat it within three days—Asturian fridges are set to “gale force” and the mould keeps evolving, sharpening from mushroom to metallic until even Stilton veterans blink.

To taste it in situ you have two options. El Chigre de Illas opens at 1 p.m. sharp, metal shutters rolling up like a theatre curtain. Inside, three tables, a football calendar and a television permanently muted. Order the tortilla con queso La Peral: thick as a paperback, the centre trembles like custard. Locals chase it with a culín of cider, poured elbow-high into a thin glass meant to be knocked back in one. Sip it and the barman will politely refill until you master the technique; by then you’ve probably agreed to buy a bottle for later (€3.50, plastic screw-top, tastes of sharp apples and mild rebellion).

The second option is to do nothing. Buy a loaf from Avilés first thing, add the cheese, drive until you find a track ending in a gate. Sit on the grass verge; the only interruptions are chestnut leaves landing butter-side-down in your lap and the distant clank of a cowbell. The picnic costs less than a London coffee and lasts longer than most West End plays.

Walking without a postcard

Maps show a spider-web of footpaths, but waymarking is theoretical. The PR-AS-237 is the exception: a 9 km loop that leaves from La Peral, climbs through bracken and eucalyptus stink to 350 m, then drops into the Nalon valley. Spring brings drifts of wild garlic thick enough to scent the car; autumn is a slow-motion fireworks display of copper beech and acid-yellow chestnut. In summer you share the path with zero humans and the occasional free-range horse whose owner recognises it by the swish of its tail. Boots are advised after rain; Asturian clay clings like a toddler in a bad mood.

The council has no tourist office, so distances feel elastic. What looks like a twenty-minute stroll can triple once you factor in lane width, reversing into gateways and stopping to photograph yet another perfectly symmetrical haystack. Accept that you will get lost; accept that the worst outcome is ending up in somebody’s driveway being offered figs by an aunt who swears you look like her cousin from Luarca.

When the weather turns

Illas sits 12 km inland; clouds arrive over the Cordillera Cantábrica with the urgency of Deliveroo drivers. One minute blue sky, the next horizontal rain that finds every zip. The landscape doesn’t flinch—cows keep grazing, farmers keep rolling bales—so you adopt local protocol: engine on, heater up, wait it out. Mobile signal vanishes in valleys; download an offline map before leaving Avilés or you’ll discover the 21st-century panic of watching Google’s blue dot drift aimlessly across a beige void.

Winter is honest. From November to March the lanes glisten with black ice, and the municipal albergue—14 beds, €12, heating optional—becomes a refuge for itinerant cheese buyers. Snow is rare but fog is not; expect a two-hour white-out where the world shrinks to the next white line on the tarmac. Summer, by contrast, is deceptively cool: 24 °C can feel like 18 °C thanks to Atlantic breeze, so pack the jumper you swore you wouldn’t need.

How to do it (and when to leave)

Base yourself in Avilés if you like hot showers after dark; the medieval core is ten minutes from the ring-road and the 24-hour petrol shop sells proper teabags. Then hire a car—no railway, no Sunday bus—and head south on the AS-237. Within six minutes the factories thin out, hedges replace guardrails and you’ll have to pull over so a tractor towing silage can squeeze past. That is the moment Illas begins.

Stay two hours and you can tick the cheese, the church and the walk. Stay the afternoon and you’ll notice details: how gates hang from hand-carved granite posts, how every third barn contains a cider press the size of a church organ, how silence has weight only when you stop talking. Stay overnight and you’ll learn that darkness here is absolute—no streetlights, no orange glow from the motorway—so the Milky Way looks like someone spilled sugar on slate.

Leave before you start referring to the albergue’s resident cat as “our” cat. Illas doesn’t belong to visitors; it leases itself out by the hour, the kilometre, the mouthful of cheese. Drive back to the coast, switch the radio on, feel the decibels return. Somewhere behind you a gate latch clicks shut, a cow coughs, the valley resets to factory settings. The noise you hear is your own life starting again—cheaper, louder, and suddenly negotiable.