Murias de Paredes

The road leaves the last wheat silo of La Ula in the mirror and starts to climb. Within ten minutes the temperature gauge drops five degrees and the radio dissolves into static. At 1 250 m the valley floor flattens into a shallow bowl of stone houses, hay barns and a single church tower—Murias de Paredes, administrative capital of the comarca de Omaña and, for anyone arriving after dusk, the place where satellite navigation gives up completely.

A village that refuses to pose

Murias is not pretty in the chocolate-box sense. Walls are granite, roofs are slate, and the occasional plastic conservatory tacked onto a 19th-century house shows that insulation usually wins over aesthetics. What you get instead is continuity: the same families have kept cattle here since parish records began in 1562, and the main street still smells of straw and wood-smoke at four in the afternoon. Walk past the church of Santa María and you’ll see a tractor parked where another town might put a flowerbed. The building itself is Romanesque stripped to the bone—thick walls, small windows, a bell that rings the hour whether anyone is listening or not.

The village spreads uphill from the single tarmacked road. Side lanes narrow into cobbled footpaths that end at stone hórreos—small granaries raised on stilts to keep mice out. Most are still used for potatoes or maize, padlocked against pine martens rather than tourists. Count them and you’ll reach six; this is not Asturias and the place has never needed to advertise.

Silence you can measure in kilometres

Head north past the last house and the track becomes a stone-droved drove road used by shepherds taking cows to summer pasture. After fifteen minutes the only sounds are your boots and, if the wind is right, the faint clank of a cowbell somewhere in the beech wood. Keep going and you reach Puerto de la Cuesta (1 720 m), where the province of León tips over into Asturias and the view opens onto a saw-edge of limestone peaks. On a clear day you can pick out the steel-grey wedge of the Cantabrian sea 70 km away; more often the mountains simply swallow the horizon in layers of blue-grey rain.

The walking is self-reliant. Waymarking appears at junctions but fades in open pasture—download the free Mapas de España sheet before you leave signal range. A circular loop south-east to the abandoned hamlet of Vega de Orlís takes three hours, crosses two fords and delivers you back to Murias in time for lunch. In May the verges glow with yellow broom and the air smells of wild thyme; by October the same path is carpeted with chestnut leaves and the river carries enough colour to stain your boots ochre.

Food built for altitude

Hunger works differently at 1 250 m. The set lunch at Hotel Rural El Urogallo starts with cocido leonés, a brick-thick stew of chickpea, morcilla and beef shin that arrives in individual clay pots. Two courses in you realise why locals eat it at two o’clock then sleep it off till four. Vegetarians get a potato and cabbage soup fortified with pimentón; vegans should pack sandwiches. Pudding is usually cuajada, a ewe’s-milk junket served with local honey sharp enough to cut through the fat. Price: €14 including a quarter-litre of house red poured from an unlabelled bottle. Dinner is the same menu, served only if you book before noon—otherwise the kitchen closes and the nearest alternative is 35 km back down the valley.

Shop before you arrive. The village colmado opens 09:00–13:00, stocks UHT milk, tinned tuna and the strongest blue cheese you will ever smell. Bread arrives frozen from a van on Tuesdays; fresh fish does not arrive at all. For anything greener than an onion drive to Villablino on a Wednesday morning market when the road is less suicidal.

Seasons that shut doors

Winter is serious. The CL-631 is kept clear to the coal works at nearby Cabornera, but the final 8 km branch to Murias can ice over before breakfast. Snow usually settles from December to March; drifts block the drove roads and the village water supply freezes at source. Come then only if you own a 4×4, carry chains and enjoy the idea of an evening when the temperature falls to –12 °C and every bar within 40 km has closed for the season.

Spring is the payoff. By late April the pass to Leitariegos reopens, meadows turn an almost violent green and shepherd’s-parsley pushes through wall joints. Wild cherries flower along the river Omaña and the first swallows appear exactly on St Mark’s day—locals still place bets on the hour. Days reach 18 °C, nights drop to 5 °C; pack both fleece and sun-cream.

Autumn brings cloud inversions. Wake early, walk 200 m above the village and you stand on an island of rock while the valley below fills with white. The beeches turn copper, chestnuts plop onto paths and wild boar leave hoof-prints across the allotments. It is the photographers’ season, though by late October the sun quits at six and the hotel terrace becomes too cold for a lingering coffee.

How to get there without calling a rescue team

Fly to Madrid or Oviedo, hire a car and allow three hours. From Madrid take the A-6 toll road to Benavente, then the A-231 towards León; turn off at Boñar onto the CL-631 and stay on it—sat-nav will tempt you onto forest tracks that dissolve into riverbeds. From Asturias airport follow the A-66 south, exit at Campomanes and climb the C-635 over Puerto de Pajares; the final 25 km twist through old mining villages where goats sleep in the road. Petrol stations open 24 h exist only in La Ula and Villablino—fill up or risk a 60-km round trip for diesel.

There is no bus. A taxi from León costs €120 if you can persuade a driver to make the return journey empty. Cycling is feasible in summer if you enjoy 30 km of relentless uphill and the certainty that every lorry heading for the coal plant will overtake on a blind bend.

What you will not find

Wi-Fi is patchy even in the hotel and disappears entirely in the upper streets. Phone reception drops to emergency calls once you leave the main road, so tell someone where you are walking and when you plan to be back. There is no cash machine; the nearest is in Villablino and it eats foreign cards for sport. Credit cards are accepted at the hotel, but the colmado prefers cash and the owner will follow you to the car for exact change.

You will not find souvenir shops, interpretive centres or guided tours. The village’s single information board is sun-bleached to the point of hieroglyphics. What you get instead is space, weather and the small revelation that Spain still contains places where the loudest noise at midnight is a dog barking two kilometres away. Pack accordingly, remember to close the gate after you, and the mountains will do the rest.