Truchas

The LE-311 climbs 400 m in the last eight kilometres before Truchas, hair-pin after hair-pin scratched into a ridge that feels too narrow for tarmac. Meet a delivery lorry and you’ll be reversing uphill into a slate niche while the driver gives a two-finger salute off the steering wheel—mountain courtesy, Castilian style. Then the road flattens, the stone houses appear, and the Atlantic weather that has chased up from Galicia slams into you unchecked. At 1,050 m this is the first solid thing the wind has met since the coast.

Stone, Wind and Empty Windows

Truchas stretches along the crest; one main street, two parallel lanes and a tangle of alleys that drop off the ridge like ribs. Rough-count the inhabitants—about 418 on the books, fewer if you visit outside fiesta week—and you’ll still find more slate roofs than people. Granite doorways are etched with 1890s dates, but the style is older: thick walls, tiny windows, wooden balconies that once held hay nets rather than geraniums. Half the houses are holiday restores shuttered ten months a year; their chimneys stay cold and the quiet is complete enough to hear a hawk over the valley.

Start at the mirador car park on the west edge (free, room for twenty cars, no height barrier). The lookout platform hangs above a 400 m drop: on clear days you can pick out the iron rooftops of Castrillo de los Polvazares fifteen kilometres away and, further still, the wheat plains of the Maragatería shimmering like pale corduroy. Cloud comes in fast—one minute the view is infinite, the next you’re standing in a grey bubble and the temperature has fallen five degrees. Bring a wind-proof; even in July the air can feel like February in the Pennines.

A Church, a Mule Track and a Museum that Might be Open

The parish church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción squats at the highest point, tower short and bell-free to deny the wind a handle. The portal is Romanesque, the rest a 17th-century rebuild paid for with transhumance money. Inside, the retablo is gilded pine rather than marble, but the scale fits the room—no cathedral pretensions here. Try the door; if it’s locked, ask in the bar two minutes down the hill. Someone will know which key-keeper is awake.

Below the church the Museo de la Arriería occupies a former mule stable. For three centuries Cabrera muleteers hauled grain to Galicia and brought back cloth, salt and coastal gossip. The exhibition is one room of pack-saddles, brass bells and black-and-white photos of men in berets who look capable of shifting a piano up a scree slope. Opening hours are announced on a piece of cardboard Blu-tacked to the door—usually 11:00-14:00 on weekdays, but if the caretaker has gone to Astorga for vet supplies you’re out of luck. Entry is free; donations go towards roof slates.

Walking Tracks that Expect You to Read a Map

Truchas is a way-station on the Camino Olvidado, the “Forgotten Way” from Bilbao to Puebla de Sanabria, but day-walkers can sample fragments without committing to a fortnight. A signed path heads south-east to the summer pastures of Iruela and Corporales, stone huts with slate caps that once housed shepherds and now shelter cows. Allow three hours return, carry water—streams run only after autumn rain—and don’t trust phone mapping; coverage vanishes in the first hollow.

If you’d rather stay closer, follow the paved lane north for a kilometre until the tarmac ends, then continue on the gravel drove road. The ridge narrows, cowbells clank somewhere below the brow, and the only shade is an occasional rowan. The turnaround point is a stone marker indicating the boundary with Galicia; from here it’s all downhill to the province of Zamora, a two-day hike if you’re tempted.

Winter brings snow that lingers even when the lowlands are green. The LE-311 is gritted, but ice forms first in the shadows under the crags and a hire-car on summer tyres will struggle. Between December and March come equipped, or ride the weekday ALSA coach—departing Astorga at 14:00, returning at 07:00 next morning. The timetable is useless for day-trips but perfect if you want to overnight and listen to the village’s single set of traffic lights blink at no-one.

One Bar, No Shop, and a Stew that Weighs a Kilo

Food options are limited to Bar Truchas on the main drag. It opens at 08:00 for coffee and churros, closes about 22:00, and shuts entirely on Tuesdays. There is no menu del día; instead the owner recites what she has. In winter it’s usually cocido maragato—chorizo, belly pork, chickpea and cabbage served in reverse order (meat first, soup last) because field workers needed the protein hit before the broth. A half portion is still large enough to postpone dinner. If you can’t face stew, ask for trucha a la cabreres, a trout from the Cúa river pan-fried with almonds and just enough garlic to keep vampires off the ridge.

Vegetarians get tortilla, salad and not much else; coeliacs should bring emergency biscuits. There is no shop, so fill water bottles at the granite fuente by the church—potable, cold, welcome on hot days. The nearest supermarket is in Fabero, 20 min down the mountain; on Sundays even that is closed.

When the Village Remembers Itself

For eleven months Truchas dozes, but around 15 August the population quadruples. Emigrants return from Madrid and Barcelona, houses open, balconies sprout flags and a ramshackle brass band marches up the street at volumes the wind can’t carry away. The fiesta programme changes each year—expect a Saturday night verbena with €1 plastic cups of wine, a dawn procession where women wear black lace head-dresses, and a communal paella cooked in a pan the size of a satellite dish. Rooms are block-booked by cousins; visitors need to reserve in Astorga or Cacabelos and drive up for the fireworks.

Late September brings the Fiesta de la Arriería, a gentler affair dedicated to muleteer lore. Demonstrations of pack-saddle weaving, tastings of botillo (a local stuffed pork parcel) and open-air singing that stops promptly at 22:00 because the organisers have farming hours next morning. Dates shift to catch the nearest weekend—check the Ayuntamiento Facebook page a week ahead.

Leaving Before the Light Goes

The last sensible departure is around sunset; the LE-311 has no street lamps and the drops are sheer. Fill up in Astorga—service stations are sparse west of the A-6—and withdraw cash there too; ATMs reach their limit in Bembibre. Truchas will not fill an itinerary with tick-box sights, but it offers something harder to package: the sensation of standing on a roof-beam of Spain while the rest of the country roars far below. Come for the wind, the stone and the silence, and plan to be gone before the clouds swallow the road.