Pesoz

The church bell strikes eleven, yet the bar shutters stay down. A farmer in overalls leads three brown cows past the stone water trough, mobile phone pressed to his ear with one hand while the other grips a rope. Nobody glances up. In Pesoz, population one-hundred-and-fifty, rush hour lasts exactly five minutes and the loudest sound is often the river Agüeira turning pebbles over three-hundred metres below.

At 525 metres above sea level, the village sits on a limestone shelf that feels higher than it sounds. Mornings can be ten degrees cooler than the coast an hour away, and Atlantic cloud sometimes barges up the valley so fast you watch your neighbour’s roof vanish. Bring a waterproof whatever the month; even July has days when the hillsides drip like neglected taps.

Grey stone, green velvet

There is no postcard plaza here. Houses are roofed with wafer-thin slate that local men still split in their sheds, and walls are the colour of wet elephants. The architecture is stubbornly practical: dwellings built tight to the lane so livestock can shelter underneath, balconies just wide enough for a ham leg and a couple of cider barrels. Yet the setting softens the austerity. Oaks and chestnuts climb the slopes behind every roofline, their leaves reflecting river-light even on dull days. In autumn the chestnut canopy turns copper, then rust, then the colour of burnt toffee; if you time it after the first frost but before the gales, you’ll walk through confetti that actually smells of something.

The simplest circuit starts beside the church of San Félix, whose Romanesque doorway was widened in 1789 to fit the priest’s new organ. Follow the concrete track signed “Arbón 2 km” and you drop gently through meadows where stone walls are held together only by moss and habit. Turn right at the bottom bridge and the gorge narrows until sunlight lands in thin spears. Ferns brush your shins; water thrums against slate. It’s not wilderness – you’ll pass an abandoned mill with its grinding stone still in situ – but it is quiet enough to hear your own heartbeat echo off the rock.

Bread before ten, cider after twelve

Food in Pesoz obeys solar time. The tiny shop bakes its own baguettes; when the tray is empty, the door closes. Arrive after eleven and you’ll find a handwritten note: “Vuelvo pronto” – back soon, though soon might mean after siesta. Locals advise stocking up in Grandas de Salime, twenty minutes down the AS-28, where the supermarket sells everything from tinned octopus to WD-40. In the village itself, the only public eating option is Mesón As Cortes, a slate-fronted house with a 1980s pool table that doubles as the weekend dining room. Order the cachopo only if you skipped breakfast: two veal steaks the size of tabloid pages encase Serrano ham and cheese, the whole affair breadcrumbed and pan-fried until it hangs off the plate like an edible hammock. A half-litre bottle of local cider costs €2.80 and arrives sideways, poured from shoulder height so the stream fizzes into a froth that must be drunk in one gulp before it dies.

If you prefer lighter grazing, ask for queso de Gamoneu. This semi-blue mountain cheese is smoked over burning hawthorn, giving it a mellow, almost bacon-like edge that converts even travellers who swear they “don’t do mould”.

When the museum outnumbers the residents

Pesoz punches above its population when it comes to explanations. The old hydro-electric station, built 1926 to power the arsenic mine at Arinte, now houses an ethnographic collection that is free and, remarkably, open whenever the caretaker sees your car pull up. Inside you’ll find a 1934 Siemens turbine still shiny enough to shave in, and a wall map plotting every watermill, forge and still within the valley. On Tuesdays the caretaker’s brother gives an informal tour; if the turbines are spinning you can stand on the metal walkway and feel the vibration travel through your boots like distant thunder. Don’t miss the photographic panel showing the 1953 flood: water up to first-floor windows, chickens perched on balcony rails, a priest rowing across what had been the main street the day before.

Opposite the station, a single-room display tells the story of emigration. Between 1900 and 1970 half the parish left for Cuba, Mexico and the steelworks of northern France. Returnees sent back money to build the very houses visitors admire, yet today only three children attend the primary school. The exhibition is honest about decline: one caption simply reads, “We live here because we choose to, not because we must.”

Roads that expect you to concentrate

Reaching Pesoz requires a final fifteen kilometres that convert confident drivers into hymn-singers. From the A-8 coastal motorway you leave the flat maize plains of the Navia valley and climb through six hairpins cut into chestnut forest. Stone crosses mark corners where lorries have failed; locals reverse with theatrical flourish into lay-bys the width of a dinner table. Meet a bus and both vehicles breathe in: wing mirrors fold like nervous ears. In winter the same tarmac ices over; chains are compulsory on roughly thirty days each year, and the village has been cut off for a week at a time when fallen trees take the power lines with them. Summer is kinder, but even August nights drop to 12 °C, so pack fleece as well as factor 30.

Walk softly, carry cash

There is no cashpoint, no petrol station, and patchy Vodafone signal. What Pesoz offers instead is a network of low-level paths that stitch together hamlets whose names – Bergazo, Lagar, Busmayor – sound like incantations. None exceeds four kilometres from the church, yet the cumulative climb can top 400 metres if you join them up. Waymarking is sporadic: look for yellow dashes on electricity poles or cairns built from slate shards. After rain the clay grips boots like wet concrete; lightweight trainers will be stripped from your feet in the first field. Carry water because fountains often run dry by late summer, and don’t bank on phone mapping – download the GPX file while you still have 4G in Grandas.

Evening light is the village’s best photographer. Around seven the sun slips beneath the western ridge and illuminates only the upper half of the valley, so grey roofs glow amber while the river stays in blue shadow. Sit on the low wall opposite the church and you may hear the blacksmith’s radio through an open doorway: Spanish pop from Madrid, softened by distance until only the melody survives. Somebody clatters a saucepan; a dog barks once, then thinks better of it. By eight the temperature has fallen another five degrees and woodsmoke begins to rise, thin and almost colourless against the darkening chestnuts.

Leave before boredom, stay long enough to listen

Pesoz will never fill an action-packed itinerary. You can see the hydro museum, walk the gorge, photograph every hórreo and still be back at the car by lunchtime. Yet treating the village as a box to tick misses its rhythm. Stay overnight – there are two village houses for rent, both under €70 – and you’ll notice how sound changes after midnight: no cars, only the river and occasional cowbell. Dawn brings mist that smells of wet fern, and if you walk up to the track above the cemetery you can watch the cloud lake break against the opposite crag exactly as it has done since before the first emigrant left for Havana.

Come expecting continuous entertainment and you’ll drive away disappointed. Come prepared to adjust your pulse to mountain time and you might find, somewhere between the smell of chestnut smoke and the sight of a slate roof gleaming like a freshly split oyster, that Pesoz has given you a quieter souvenir than any cathedral city could manage.