Mazaricos

The AC-400 from Santa Comba narrows to a single track just past the dairy cooperative, and that’s your cue. Switch off the sat-nav voice—she’ll keep begging you to overtake hay lorries that have nowhere to pull in—and count three stone crucifixes on the right. Congratulations: you’ve arrived in the kind of Galicia that guidebooks file under “miscellaneous”. Mazaricos council has 5,000 residents, 31 tiny parishes, and, according to TripAdvisor, exactly three things to see. None of them are open on Sunday afternoon.

Landscape with Cows and Eucalyptus

Spread over a sequence of gentle ridges 35 minutes inland from Santiago airport, the municipality looks, at first glance, like one vast pasture interrupted by blue gum plantations. Look again and the pattern shifts: every valley fold hides a stream with a moss-lined millrace, every third hamlet keeps a chestnut grove the locals still call a souto. October turns those stands the colour of burnt toffee, and the air smells of wet leaf-litter and woodsmoke from small holdings that still burn their own off-cuts. Rain isn’t a talking point here; it’s the default setting. Even in July the grass stays green enough to stain walking boots, which is why dairy herds outnumber people and every other vehicle is a Massey Ferguson.

The empty-road reputation is deserved. Between morning milking and the 14:00 lunch shutdown you can drive for twenty minutes and meet nothing more than a dog on a warm wall. Cyclists love it—until the road tilts. None of the hills qualify as mountain passes, but they string together like a rollercoaster designed by a cruel architect: 8% gradient, brief respite, 9% again. Bring a compact chainset or be prepared to dine out on the story later.

What Passes for Sights

Forget ticketed attractions. Mazaricos trades in roadside curiosities that require patience more than entrance fees. Start in Buiturón where the twelfth-century church of Santa María squats behind a yew hedge so thick it swallows engine noise. Step inside and the temperature drops five degrees; Romanesque masonry does better air-conditioning than any modern unit. The carved capitals are unfinished—one apostle still lacks a nose, a local mason’s protest against unpaid wages, legend says. Drop €1 in the box by the door or the sacristan will materialise from across the lane to collect it personally.

Drive east to Olveira and the pattern repeats: granite, slate, silence. Here the Romanesque survives only in the apse, the rest having been rebuilt after a lightning strike in 1782. Stand at the back door at 11:00 and you’ll hear the priest’s housekeeper rattling the lunch pans; the echo off the stone is better than any audio guide.

Between villages the vernacular architecture keeps score. Every second house owns a stone hórreo—a raised granary designed to thwart rats—with dimensions dictated by family size rather than aesthetics. The largest, outside Ameixenda, stretches nine metres and once stored enough rye to keep a widow in black bread for three winters. Photograph it while you can; a Dutch collector offered €12,000 for the structure last year and the grandson is tempted.

Walking Without Waymarks

The council has produced a glossy leaflet entitled “Seven Routes of Mazaricos”. Print runs: 300. You won’t find it. Instead, download the GPX files from the regional tourism board and prepare for benign neglect. Paths follow ancient drove roads between cortes—stone cow byres—cross knee-deep fords and plunge into eucalyptus shade so sudden it feels like dusk at midday. A good short circuit begins at the picnic lawn above the Río Grande (signposted “Playa Fluvial”, which raised English hopes of sand until they saw the deck-chairs on turf). Follow the water downstream for 3 km and you’ll pass two abandoned mills with grindstones still in situ; herons use the sluices as fishing platforms. Cross the medieval bridge at Tortes, turn left at the shrine shaped like a miniature house, and the lane climbs back to your car past a farm that sells milk by the jug—leave coins in the honesty box fashioned from a detergent bottle.

Longer hikes link up with the Camino de Santiago variant from Finisterre, but that’s a five-day commitment and requires phoning ahead for baggage transfer—Mazaricos has neither taxi firm nor uber.

What You’ll Eat (If You Time It Right)

Cuisine is farm-kitchen rather than chef-driven. Thursday is cocido day at the only bar in A Picota: chickpea stew thick enough to hold a spoon vertical, served with a side of grelos (turnip tops) that taste like sprout tops with an attitude. Expect to share a table with the vet and the artificial-insemination technician; they’ll discuss udder infections as you chew, so polish your school Spanish or develop a sudden interest in livestock.

Beef comes from the dairy herd, usually ex-plough oxen retired at eight years. Order churrasco de ternera and you’ll get a plate of thin-cut sirloin flash-grilled, milder than British Aberdeen Angus but with a yellow fat rim that speaks of lifelong grass. A glass of house red—usually a Mencía from nearby Ribeira Sacra—adds €1.80 and tastes better once the tannin has had thirty seconds of autumn air.

Pudding options narrow to whatever the owner’s wife baked at dawn. October through December that means tarta de castañas, a damp chestnut sponge capped with custard the colour of burnt cream. Brits compare it to a cross between parkin and bread-and-butter pudding; Galicians simply call it postre and charge €2.

Sunday complicates things. Both bars shut at 16:00 sharp and the nearest supermarket is 18 km away in Santa Comba. Arrive late and your dinner defaults to crisps from the filling-station vending machine—assuming you remembered to fill the tank before 14:00 when the pumps lock for siesta.

When to Bother

Spring brings ox-eye daisies to the road verges and enough daylight to walk after the 22:00 news. Rain still falls, but showers pass quickly and the air smells of bruised apple blossom. Autumn is the photographer’s choice: russet oaks, yellow chestnut, morning mist that burns off by coffee time. Winter is wet, properly wet—expect 180 mm in January—and daylight shrinks to eight gloomy hours. On the plus side you’ll have the mills, churches and hórreos to yourself, and farmers are happier to talk when they’re not rushing to get second-cut silage in before nightfall.

Summer stays cool enough that jeans rarely feel oppressive, but July crowds Santiago airport and the AC-400 becomes a conveyor belt of hire cars whose drivers treat every bend like the Nürburgring. Pull over, let them pass, and remember that the council mows the riverbank lawn every Tuesday; picnic timing is everything.

The Honest Truth

Mazaricos will not suit checklist travellers. There is no gift shop, no interpretive centre, no craft beer taproom—just 200 square kilometres of working countryside where the Middle Ages survive as functional stone rather than museum exhibits. Come with waterproof shoes, a full tank and a willingness to accept lunch whenever it is offered. Treat the place as a slow afternoon between Santiago and the coast, not as a destination in itself, and the lack of monuments starts to feel like the point. The council’s unofficial slogan—whispered by the woman scooping filloas at the autumn fair—translates roughly as: “We’re still here when you’ve finished rushing.” Listen to her, wipe the custard from your chin, and you might find you stay longer than planned—especially if it rains so hard the road home turns to soup.