Lobios

The first clue that the map has stopped being reliable is the temperature of the river. At Riocaldo the Limia slides over granite boulders and suddenly turns bath-warm, as if someone far upstream has left a giant kettle boiling. This is not a spa with turnstiles and wristbands; it is simply a Galician stream where volcanic rock pushes water to 42 °C and the council has added three concrete steps and a handrail. Bring flip-flops—the stones are slimy—and do not expect lockers. Your towel will have to dry on the bonnet of the car.

Lobios sits on the southern edge of Ourense province, hard against Portugal, and the border feels more like a loose stitch than a seam. The same granite ridge continues north as the Xurés, south as the Peneda-Gerês national park; oak woods, wolf prints, place-names that swap final “o” for “e” depending on which side of the ridge you spent the night. The municipality is scattered across a handful of hamlets—Lobios itself, Riocaldo, A Cela—each too small for a proper supermarket but big enough to lose mobile signal between houses. Total population hovers around five hundred in winter, swelling when emigrant grandchildren fly home for August.

Driving into the kettle

Porto airport is the sensible gateway: up the A3 toll road, past the vineyards of the Minho valley, then west on the N525 for ninety minutes. The last stretch climbs through commercial eucalyptus until, without ceremony, the road tips into the Limia gorge and the thermometer drops five degrees. In winter the pass can be white with frost while the valley below still grows oranges; in July it works the other way round, with the hills acting as a natural air-conditioner until the afternoon breeze stalls and the air feels like warm milk.

A car is non-negotiable. Buses from Ourense reach the main village on school-day timetables and stop dead at lunchtime. Fill the tank in Bande, ten kilometres back—Lobios has a bar, an ATM that is often out of order, and little else. Sat-nav likes to switch between Galician and Spanish spellings mid-route; if the voice suddenly tells you to turn for “Lindoso” you have not strayed into Portugal, you have simply reached the reservoir shared by both countries.

Granite, wolves and a church without a postcard

Guidebooks sometimes bill the Baixa Limia–Xurés Natural Park as “Galicia’s little-known wilderness”, which overstates the solitude—Spanish families descend at weekends with mountain bikes tied to the roof—but mid-week you can walk for two hours and meet only a farmer on a quad bike moving cattle to higher grass. Way-marking is improving: yellow-and-white posts on the route from Riocaldo to the Portuguese mirador, faded paint everywhere else. The standard circuit follows the river to a waterfall, then switch-backs through sweet-chestnut woods to a ridge where the view opens across two reservoirs and a confusion of granite domes. Distance sounds trivial—seven kilometres—yet the ascent is close to five hundred metres and the path turns to fist-sized cobbles that roll underfoot. Allow three hours, carry more water than you think, and do not trust the cloudless sky; Atlantic weather slips over the hills like a lid slamming shut.

Wildlife is present but not performing. Wolves are heard more than seen, wild boar root up the verges at dusk, and the small horses locals call garranos stand motionless among the broom, pretending to be rocks. Give them space; selfies close enough to show nostril hair end with a bite or a fine.

Santa María church in Lobios village will never make the cover of a heritage brochure. Its oldest stones are twelfth-century, but successive rebuilds have left it squat, whitewashed, content to be part of the landscape rather than a star in it. Sit on the bench opposite at seven on a summer evening and you get the full soundtrack: swifts overhead, the priest’s bicycle clicking into the porch, someone’s television through an open window explaining the Madrid weather in Galician.

Hot water, cold wine

Food is country-simple. Trout from the reservoir arrives grilled with a handful of toasted almonds; caldo gallego, the regional potato-and-greens broth, tastes better after a morning in the rain. Pulpo a feira—octopus on a wooden plate—needs paprika sharp enough to make you cough. The only restaurant with a reliable daily menu is Restaurante Riocaldo by the thermal car park: three courses plus a jug of local Ribeiro white for €14. Order the chestnut tart even if you think you dislike chestnuts; it is less sweet than British parkin and tastes of smoke rather than sugar.

Evening entertainment is a bottle of wine on the river wall. The hot springs stay open twenty-four hours, lit by a single street-lamp that turns the steam silver. Spanish visitors treat the pools like a social club: grandparents up to their necks at midnight, teenagers arriving with supermarket speakers. Politeness is to keep voices low and leave the stereos in the car. Alcohol is tolerated but glass is not; plastic tumblers are sold at the bar for fifty cents.

What can go wrong

August crowds are real. By eleven on a Saturday morning the Riocaldo pools resemble a lido in Leeds—every space claimed by a damp towel, every parking bay filled. Come back at dusk or, better, book outside school holidays. Rain is not a disaster; it simply changes the plan. Tracks turn to chocolate mousse and mountain-bike tyres clog within metres, so swap pedals for boots and walk the river instead. The water is warmer when the air is cold anyway.

Do not rely on Google Maps offline; the contour lines lie. A gap of two finger-widths on the screen can mean an hour of hairpins and sudden fog. Tell someone where you are going, write the car registration on the bar chalkboard if necessary. Emergency cover is the Guardia Civil post in Bande—twenty minutes away on a road that narrows to a single lane whenever two lorries meet.

Heading home

Leave early and you can be back in Porto for lunch, but the smarter move is to cross the dam at Lindoso, flash your passport at the unmanned hut, and spend the night in a Portuguese quinta on the other side. From the terrace you will still see the same granite peaks, still hear the same river, but the wine will be green and the coffee served in a different shaped cup. Borders, after all, are only lines; the kettle underneath belongs to the mountain.