Entrimo

The road climbs through sweet-chestnut woods until the tarmac thins and the dashboard thermometer drops six degrees. Suddenly you’re level with the rooflines of granite cottages and the sat-nav politely confesses it has never heard of the lane you’re on. Welcome to Entrimo, a parish-scatter of barely 1,200 souls pressed hard against the Portuguese frontier. On a clear day you can see right across to the Peneda-Gerês National Park; on a normal day you can’t see the next field for cloud.

Border country, mountain time

Entrimo sits 650–900 m up in the south-west corner of Ourense province, and altitude dictates everything. April dawns can be frosty while the valley floor basks in 18 °C. In July the air stays mercifully cool, but when Atlantic weather rolls in it drags low cloud that turns lanes into dribbling streams. Winter is serious: snow tyres are useful, fog lights essential, and the OU-301 sometimes closes for hours after a storm. Plan like you would for the Brecon Beacons, not the Costas.

The reward is space. Hamlets appear every kilometre or so – Ameixeira, Lobeira, Tourém – each with its own tiny chapel, hórreo grain-store on stilts, and stone water trough where someone’s washing muddy wellies. Between them lie oak and chestnut coppice, abandoned terraces now bright with broom, and the silver thread of the Salas river hunting the Portuguese border. Mobile signal flickers in and out; sheep have right of way. You learn to slow the hire car to second gear and wave at every tractor, partly from courtesy, partly because the driver is probably a cousin of the woman who has your apartment key.

Walking maps that still smell of printer ink

Official way-marking is patchy, but the tourist office in Xinzo de Limia will print you a free 1:25,000 sheet entitled Rutas de Entrimo. The inkjet version is two weeks old and already out of date – a landslip has swallowed part of the Alto do Leboreiro path – which is exactly why British walkers who like a little uncertainty in their day love the place. Most routes are linear: leave the car by the cemetery, follow a stone-walled lane uphill until the wall becomes a random tumble, then keep going until you hit a forestry track wide enough for eucalyptus lorries. Somewhere along the way a vista opens towards Portugal, unless the cloud closes ranks and you navigate by cow-bell acoustics.

Allow four hours for the circular loop from Ameixeira up to the wind-bent viewpoint at Pedrada. The ascent is 350 m, enough to make you think about that second pastry, but never scary. Stout shoes beat approach shoes; the stone is slick even in dry weather and the Galician cattle industry has left generous brown land-mines. In May the verges are loud with cuckoos; in October chestnut husks crack underfoot and wild boar rootle among the leaves. You’ll meet two locals maximum, probably carrying plastic buckets of mushrooms.

Lunch at the only bar that opens on Thursdays

There is no high street, no plaza mayor ringed with cafés. Instead each parish has a social bar attached to the village hall, open when the key-holder feels like it. The safest bet is Bar O Coto in Lobeira, 3 km below the main ridge. Order a cunca of Ribeiro white wine (€1.40, served in a little ceramic bowl) and the menú del día if it’s offered – perhaps lacón con grelos, pork shoulder simmered with turnip tops, the flavour somewhere between Cornish boiled bacon and Irish boiled bacon but greener. Pudding is tarta de castaña, moist chestnut sponge that even sponge-sceptics finish. They don’t take cards; bring a €20 note and you’ll get enough change for coffee.

Vegetarians can cobble together a meal from tortilla, local honey and the excellent country bread, but expect puzzled sympathy. Vegans should self-cater. Stock up in Xinzo de Limia before you drive up – Entrimo’s only shop is a tiny colmado in Ameixeira that opens 09:00–13:00, sells tinned tuna, and smells perpetually of floor polish.

Stone beds and wood-burners

Accommodation is self-catering or nothing. The pick is Casa Carballo, a two-century granite longhouse restored by an expat Madrid architect who swapped metro delays for foghorns. Beamed ceilings, a power-shower that actually powers, and a wood-burner that eats an improbable amount of oak off-cuts. It costs £70 a night year-round, two-night minimum, and you collect the key from a neighbour who only speaks Galician – have Google Translate fired up. Two kilometres away, Casa Rural O’Pozo sleeps four, handy if you’ve brought walking friends and a dog; the garden backs onto a eucalyptus plantation where nightjars churr at dusk. August books up early with Portuguese families fleeing Porto’s heat, so reserve by Easter.

There is no hotel, no youth hostel, no swimming pool complex. What you get instead is silence thick enough to hear your own heartbeat and a night sky the International Dark-Sky Association hasn’t noticed yet – take a red-filter torch and the Milky Way does its own light show.

When to come, when to stay away

Late April–mid-June serves up flowery meadows, migrant birds and daytime temperatures around 20 °C. September–October trades flowers for chestnut aroma and the chance of an Indian-summer day when both sides of the border shimmer gold. Mid-July to mid-August is warm enough to sit outside at 22:00 but Portuguese holidaymakers clog the cottages and river picnic spots resemble Lisboa car-parks on a bank holiday. November–March is wild: gales strip the last leaves, mist swallows entire valleys and the heating bill rivals the accommodation cost. Still, if you want the hills to yourself, own several fleece layers and don’t mind driving in sideways rain, winter has a stripped-back beauty that recalls the Scottish Highlands without the midges.

One hard truth: Entrimo is not a base for tick-off tourism. Santiago de Compostela is 90 minutes of fast motorway but you’ll spend the last 30 on bends tight enough to test the strongest stomach. The Roman gold mines at Las Médulas add another 75 minutes westwards. Come here to stay here, swapping cathedral spires for stone walls and souvenir shops for a bar that still writes the bill in biro on a paper napkin.

Drive home with dirty boots and a full ashtray

Leave early if you’ve a flight from Porto; the A52 is quick when it’s open but a single lorry breakdown can queue traffic back into Spain. Drop the key back through the letterbox, promise the neighbour you’ll return (you might – the hills have that effect), and coast down the mountain with the windows open. Somewhere around Lobios the fog lifts, the valley floor appears and you realise you’ve spent three days in a place that doesn’t quite believe in the twenty-first century. Entrimo won’t give you bragging rights, Instagram trophies or even guaranteed views. What it offers is a corner of Europe where the clock still runs on wood-smoke, rainfall and whoever last bothered to wind the church clock.