Piñor

The thermometer drops four degrees between O Carballiño and Pinor. Not metaphorically—watch the car's display as the road climbs through switchbacks scented with eucalyptus. At 600 metres, the air thins enough to notice if you've come from coastal Vigo, and the vineyards below shrink to postage stamps stitched across granite ribs.

This is mountain Galicia, though nobody markets it as such. The province's interior folds into abrupt valleys where villages scatter like dropped coins, each parish separated by chestnut woods and fields that tilt at angles no tractor should manage. Pinor contains twenty-odd hamlets across 45 square kilometres; the council building sits in Vilariño, but half the population would need twenty minutes' drive to reach it. Addresses here are relational—"the house after the bend where the cherry tree was"—and Google Maps expires politely at the first stone track.

Stone, Vine, Silence

Start early, when mist still fills the troughs between hills. The Romanesque portico of San Salvador de Lebosende emerges first as geometry—semi-circular arch, crude chevrons—then as stone warmed by sunrise. The door will almost certainly be locked; services happen twice a month and the key-holder opens only when the priest arrives from O Carballiño. No matter. Stand beneath the carved Christ and listen: a chainsaw two valleys away, a dog, nothing else. The silence is not theatrical; it's simply what happens when traffic volume equals zero.

Walk the lane south towards Quintela. Dry-stone walls shoulder the tarmac, each capped with moss the colour of old pennies. Every fifty metres an hórreo lifts on stilts—narrow granite legs designed to keep rats from stored maize. Some have slate roofs intact, others gap like broken teeth. They photograph better in overcast light; come July's noon glare the contrast burns out detail and the stone turns flat white.

The vineyards start where the forest pulls back. Ribeiro DO begins formally a few kilometres west, but nobody told the smallholders here. They plant treixadura, torrontés and loureira on terraces barely three metres wide, working gradients that would terrify a Côte-Rôtie grower. Yields are tiny—often a single barrel per family—so don't expect cellar doors or tasting flights. Knock only if you speak Spanish (Galician helps more) and only after 11 a.m.; before that the workers are in the fields and the elderly are at Mass or asleep.

Maps Lie About Distance

A circular tramp linking Vilariño, Lebosende and the monastery looks trivial on paper: six kilometres, perhaps seven. Allow two and a half hours. The camino rises 200 metres on concrete so steep the tarmac has wrinkled, then drops equally through loam that cakes to boot soles after rain. Waymarking is sporadic—one yellow arrow painted in 1997, a plastic ribbon flapping from a chestnut. If the path forks, take the higher option; the lower invariably ends in a corral guarded by a mastiff named something like "Bandido" who regards strangers as postal workers regard unregistered letters.

Carry water. Bars exist—Casa Cando in Vilariño, O Recanto in A Pousada—but they open when the owner wakes, shut when football starts, and may offer only coffee or Estrella Galicia at room temperature. Pack a bocadillo in O Carballiño before you ascend; the solitary shop in Pinor keeps eccentric hours and stocks more tinned octopus than fresh fruit.

Rain changes the rules. What was firm yesterday becomes chocolate-coloured gloop that sucks at ankles. Locals wear knee-length rubber boots year-round; trainers last about twenty minutes. If the sky closes in, abandon the high loop and stick to the tarmac between parishes. Even then, watch for water sheeting off fields—Galician drivers treat these lanes as personal racetracks and the stone walls leave no margin.

When the Leaves Turn

October delivers the payoff. Chestnut trees ignite to copper, vineyards fade through lime to ochre, and the morning air smells of bruised apples. Villagers set out sacks along the road: "Castañas 3 €/kg" scrawled in marker. They honour-stack the money in an honesty box fashioned from a plastic water bottle. Roast them that night over any portable stove; the thin skins split with a sound like applause.

The vendima (grape harvest) happens late September to early October, dates decided by WhatsApp consensus. Families arrive from A Coruña or Vigo, grandparents included, and work plots by hand. Plastic tubs fill on the terraces, then disappear down tracks too narrow for lorries. A tractor with a tipping trailer shuttles back and forth, driven by someone who learned clutch control at twelve. Photographs are fine if you ask first; cash offers for grapes will be refused with polite bewilderment.

Winter brings snow perhaps three times, seldom lasting beyond lunch. The road from Ourense can ice over; carry chains even if the forecast promises sun. Spring is the secret season—orchards white with blossom, temperatures in the low twenties, and no tour buses because there never are any. Summer, by contrast, can feel claustrophobic. When the thermometer nudges 35 °C, the valley walls trap heat and the streams shrink to threads. Shade exists only inside stone houses designed to retain winter warmth; midday hiking becomes an exercise in endurance.

Getting There, Getting Fed, Getting Gone

Public transport stops at O Carballiño, 12 km west. Monday to Friday a Monbus service links the town to Ourense (35 min) and Santiago (1 hr 20), but the last bus back leaves at 19:10. From O Carballiño you'll need a taxi—about €18—or pre-booked transfer; none wait at the rank. Hiring a car in Ourense or Santiago is simpler; allow an hour from either airport, longer if you obey the 30 km/h limits through every parish.

Accommodation is thin. Casa Rural O Peral has three rooms in a converted farmhouse above A Pousada (doubles €70, breakfast €8). The owners speak enough English to explain shower quirks but not to narrate local history. Book dinner too—octopus á feira on Thursdays, pork shoulder Saturdays—because the nearest alternative is back down the mountain. Wild camping is tolerated if you ask at the nearest house and leave no trace; choose the pine plantation south of the monastery, not the vineyards.

Leave time for the descent. The N-120 towards Ourense threads through the Avia gorge, sunlight flickering between poplars like an old cine film. Pull over at the mirador above Leiro; the view stretches across three provinces, a rumpled carpet of forest and field that explains why nobody built a motorway through here. Pinor will already feel farther away than the odometer suggests—a place that measures distance not in kilometres but in curves, conversations, the slow accumulation of quiet.