Maceda

The castle restaurant runs out of roast veal every Sunday by three o’clock. That’s the first thing you learn in Maceda, a granite hill-town west of Ourense whose population (2,600 on the sign, nearer 2,200 once the teenagers leave for university) fits comfortably inside one London postcode. The second is that nobody here apologises for the hills; they simply point upwards and say the views are free.

A Town That Forgot to Grow

Maceda never quite made the leap from defensive outpost to market centre. The Romans passed through, the medieval counts built a keep, then everyone seemed to agree the place was finished. What remains is a tight knot of slate-roofed houses threaded by two main streets and a church square large enough for a game of five-a-side. Park on the upper ring-road—spaces are marked but rarely metered—and the entire historic core drops away beneath you like a grey stone amphitheatre.

Walk downhill for three minutes and you reach the castle itself: a curtain wall, a single tower, and a terrace that now doubles as the dining room of the Castelo de Maceda. The menu is printed daily and leans heavily on local veal, chestnut-fed pork, and whatever the chef foraged from the surrounding oak and chestnut belt that morning. Expect to pay €32 for the three-course lunch, €45 if you add a half-bottle of Ribeiro. Book by WhatsApp; the staff answer faster than most London concierges and will save the last slice of tarta de castaña if you ask nicely.

Below the terrace the land folds into the valley of the Rio Barbantiño, a stream too small for boats but wide enough to power the mills that once ground the town’s rye. The hills opposite are striped with smallholdings—cabbage plots, kiwi vines strung on wires, and the occasional granite hórreo raised on stilts to keep the rats out of the corn. It looks unchanged because it largely is: electricity arrived in 1958, the ring-road in 1992, and 4G only after someone climbed the castle tower with a antenna in 2018.

Walking Without Waymarks

Maceda doesn’t do signposts. Instead, villagers gesture towards “the old path to Xirazga” or “the way the priests used to walk to Allariz”. Both routes leave the top edge of town within 200 metres of the church, descend through sweet-chestnut coppice, then climb again to scatterings of stone houses where the only traffic is a quad bike loaded with firewood. The going is rarely steep for more than ten minutes, but the clay loam turns slick after rain—decent treads are non-negotiable, and the smell of wet earth follows you home.

A comfortable circuit takes ninety minutes: south along the paved lane towards the tiny hamlet of Foxo, left at the cruceiro (a stone cross whose carving of St James is now finger-smooth), then back uphill on a grassy track that delivers you to the castle gate just as the restaurant fires up its coffee machine. Total ascent is 160 metres, about the same as climbing the Monument nine times, but the reward is a soundtrack of jays, distant chainsaws, and absolute silence in between.

If you want a proper hike, the Ruta de los Castros continues north-east for 18 km to the Iron-Age settlement at San Cibrao de Las. Waymarking is intermittent; download the GPX before you leave the hotel Wi-Fi. Most walkers split the stage, overnighting in Allariz and catching the morning bus back to Maceda (departs 08:10, arrives 08:35, €1.55).

When to Come, What to Bring

Spring arrives late at 550 metres. The first wild daffodils appear in late March, the chestnut buds open in May, and for six weeks the hills look like someone has laid green baize over the granite. Temperatures peak around 22°C—perfect walking weather—but Atlantic fronts still sweep in, so pack a lightweight waterproof even when the sky looks innocent.

Autumn is equally reliable and quieter. The forest turns copper in late October, the restaurant starts serving game (wild boar stew appears on Thursdays), and hotel prices drop by twenty percent after the Spanish national holiday on 12 October. Summer, by contrast, is hot and surprisingly busy: Ourense families drive up for the evening breeze, the castle terrace fills with prams, and you’ll need to order lunch before 14:00 to guarantee a table. Winter is misty, beautiful and often empty; snow is rare but frost can linger until noon, making the cobbles treacherous.

Whatever the season, bring cash. The only ATM stands outside the pharmacy on the ring-road and empties every weekend. Most bars close on Monday; the ethnography museum (one room, free entry, ask in the council office for the key) follows suit. English is thin on the ground—phrasebook Spanish works, but Galician greetings (“boas”) earn warmer smiles.

Beyond the One-Street Town

Maceda works best as a pivot rather than a destination. Ten minutes west by car, the Roman spa town of Baños de Molgas offers thermal pools at 38°C for €7 an afternoon. Fifteen minutes north, Allariz has a proper medieval quarter, a river beach monitored in summer, and a bakery that sells almond tarta worth crossing postcodes for. If you’re without wheels, both places are linked by the same sporadic bus that serves Maceda; the timetable is printed on waterproof paper and nailed inside the shelter—photograph it, because the online version is usually out of date.

Back in Maceda the evening ritual is simple. Buy a €1.20 Estrella from the Bar Central, carry it to the castle steps, and watch the sun drop behind the same hills that once sheltered the town from Portuguese raiders. The lights of Ourense glimmer 28 km away, but up here the loudest sound is the clink of coffee cups drifting from the restaurant kitchen. By ten the streets are empty, the sky is ink-black, and you remember why small places can feel larger than cities: there’s nothing to dilute them.