Santa Eulalia de Oscos

The church clock strikes eleven and the only other sound is a tractor reversing into a barn. Santa Eulalia de Oscos isn’t pretending to be asleep; it really is this quiet. Five hundred souls are spread across a handful of hamlets, each separated by chestnut woods, cow pastures and lanes so narrow that hedgerows scrape both wing mirrors at once.

This is Asturias sliding into Galicia, a region where the maps insist a village exists every kilometre yet you can drive for twenty minutes without meeting another car. The council’s official population figure—around 450—feels generous once you start walking. Out on the tracks you’re more likely to count stone hórreos (raised granaries) than people.

Stone, Slate and Silence

The village centre—such as it is—clusters around the parish church of Santa Eulalia. No Gothic spires, no frescoed dome: just a modest stone rectangle with a wooden bell-cot and a porch that smells of wax and damp coats. Step inside and the temperature drops five degrees; the priest hasn’t bothered with heating since 1978. What you get instead is the soundtrack of rural Spain: a dripping tap, a dog barking two streets away, the faint thud of someone chopping firewood.

The houses are built for weather that arrives sideways. Walls are granite, roofs are slabs of blue-black slate, and every balcony is deep enough to keep the rain off your cigarettes. In Pumares, a five-minute drive uphill, the stone is so uniformly grey that the occasional red geranium feels almost shocking. Walk a little further to Curriellos and you’ll find corn stores balanced on mushroom-shaped stilts—miniature wooden space pods designed to stop rats reaching the grain. They still work; the rats haven’t given up.

Walking Without Waymarks

There is no pay-and-display car park, no visitor centre, no ticket booth. What there is, if you ask in the Bar Seimeira, is a hand-drawn map photocopied so many times the contour lines have merged into a single bruise-coloured blur. It’s more reliable than it looks. The best strategy is to pick two hamlets—say, Villamartín and A Rubia—and walk the old mule track between them. The distance is barely three kilometres but the gradient adds forty minutes and a light sweat. Chestnut trees meet overhead, forming a tunnel that keeps off both sun and rain; in October the ground is a carpet of spent husks that crunch like cornflakes.

Serious hikers can keep going into the Oscos Biosphere Reserve, a tangle of oak and beech that stretches eastwards for 1,200 square kilometres. The rest of us loop back to the roadside café for a bowl of caldo (beef broth thick enough to stand a spoon in) and a slice of sponge cake still warm from the wood-fired range. Price: €3.50, cash only. The owner will apologise for not having a card machine; she’s been “about to get one” since 2016.

Food That Knows the Forecast

Menus don’t change with fashion, they change with the sky. After a week of Atlantic squalls you’ll find fabada—white beans slow-cooked with morcilla, pancetta and a slab of tocino—served in deep soup plates that keep the fat from congealing. When the weather clears the same kitchen will grill a thick pink slice of cecina (air-dried beef) and serve it with fried eggs whose yolks are the colour of orange traffic cones. Vegetarians get cabbage and potatoes, but the cabbage has been grown within sight of the table and the potatoes still hold the shape of the soil they came from.

Cider is obligatory. The waiter holds the green bottle above his head, aims a thin ribbon of liquid at a tilted glass two feet below, and somehow misses the floor. The ritual isn’t showmanship; the pour aerates the cider and takes the edge off its acidity. Drink it in one gulp—anything left in the glass goes down the sluice—then pass the bottle clockwise. British visitors who treat it like lager end up horizontal remarkably quickly; at 5% ABV the stuff is stronger than it tastes, and the measures are bottomless.

When to Come, When to Stay Away

April and May are the sweet spot. The hills are neon green, orchards froth with cherry blossom and daytime temperatures hover around 18°C—cardigan weather, not coat. Spring also brings the Seimeira waterfall into full voice; a 45-minute woodland stroll from the village ends at a 30-metre cascade that fills a plunge pool the colour of bitter beer. You can swim if you don’t mind 12°C water and an audience of cows.

Autumn is equally good, especially for mycologists. Every Saturday morning locals head into the woods with wicker baskets and pocket knives; if you follow, keep at least a hedge-length behind and never touch a cep that hasn’t been cut. The council fines outsiders for illegal picking, and the guardia civil patrol in unmarked 4x4s.

July and August are warmer—24°C at midday—but also wetter in spirit. Spanish families rent rural houses, turn the music up and fire up disposable barbecues. By ten o’clock the silence has usually reasserted itself, but light sleepers should pack earplugs. Winter is a different proposition. The road from Taramundi climbs to 650 metres and ices over first; if snow settles, the village can be cut off for 48 hours. Book a house with a fireplace, bring logs (supermarket bundles are €5 a bag) and resign yourself to short, colourless days.

Getting Here, Getting Stuck

Public transport is theoretical. Two buses a week leave Oviedo at dawn on Tuesday and Friday, reach Santa Eulalia at lunchtime and depart again before you’ve finished coffee. Miss one and the next is a €90 taxi ride away. A hire car from Asturias airport takes 90 minutes on the A-8 and then 30 minutes of switchbacks; fill the tank in Villanueva de Oscos because the village pump closes at 6 pm and doesn’t open Sundays.

Distances deceive. Ten kilometres on the map equals twenty minutes of second-gear bends, plus the obligatory pause for a farmer moving his cattle. If you’re planning a day-trip to the coast, set off early: Luarca is 55 km west but the road wriggles so much that seabirds arrive faster than you will.

What You Won’t Find—and Might Miss

There is no cashpoint, no boutique selling lavender soap, no Saturday market piled with vintage lace. Wi-Fi exists but limps; mobile data drops to ‘E’ in the valleys. What you get instead is the smell of woodsmoke at dawn, the sight of a red squirrel tight-roping along a phone line, the realisation that you haven’t locked a door since you arrived.

British visitors sometimes leave disappointed because they arrived hunting Instagram moments and discovered a place that refuses to pose. Santa Eulalia doesn’t do panoramas; it does details. A keyhole doorway worn smooth by four centuries of shoulders. The way slate roofs turn silver after rain. The moment, just before dusk, when every barn window glows amber and you understand why people stay.

Come prepared to slow down, to speak in monosyllables, to measure time by church bells rather than battery life. Pack boots, cash and a sense of horizontal time. Leave the rest in the boot—you won’t need it, and neither does the village.