Crecente

The Miño arrives in Crecente like an afterthought. One minute you're driving through eucalyptus and stone-walled lanes, the next the valley drops away and there's Portugal on the far bank, close enough to read the number plates. No fanfare, no viewpoint car park – just a sudden gap in the trees and a river wide enough to make you wonder why nobody mentions this place.

They don't, by the way. Mention it, that is. TripAdvisor lists 235 reviews for the entire municipality, and half appear to be Portuguese day-trippers who crossed the bridge by mistake. British travellers tend to rocket past on the A-52, bound for Santiago's cathedral or the coast's seafood platters. Which is precisely why Crecente still works.

The Lay of the Land

This isn't the Galicia of bagpipes and tidal estuaries. You're 60 km inland here, at the eastern edge of Pontevedra province where the land starts to ripple properly. The village centre – if you can call it that – clusters round a twelfth-century church whose bell tower serves less as a monument, more as a navigational aid. Turn left at Santa María and you'll find the pharmacy; right takes you to Bar O Palancas where the coffee costs €1.20 and they remember how you like it on the second visit.

Everything else spreads out in parroquias: Filgueira, Portela, Ribas, names that appear on rusted road signs then vanish into oak scrub and vineyard terraces. Distances deceive. The map says it's four kilometres to the river; the road twists like a dropped ribbon and takes twenty minutes. Hire cars get scratched here – not through malice, just narrow tracks built for a farmer's pick-up and his dog.

The Miño itself behaves differently at this latitude. Wide and slow, it feels more lake than river, fringed with market gardens and plots of vines that plunge downhill at improbable angles. Nobody quite knows how the tractors stay upright. In late afternoon the water turns the colour of polished pewter, reflecting terraces that have been hacked into the schist since Romans first planted here.

What You Actually Do Here

You walk. Not along way-marked national trails – those stop at the county boundary – but along farm tracks where the mud squeaks underfoot and every second gate asks you to please close it. Start at the mirador above A Franqueira: five minutes from the car, views straight down the valley, and usually nobody else. From there drop towards the water on any path that looks used; if you hit a vineyard, follow the edge until you find a track again. The river access at A Cova has a makes picnic table and stone steps worn smooth by generations of women laundering shirts. Swimming is possible but frowned upon; the current looks lazy until you step in.

Bring binoculars. The opposite bank is Portugal's Minho region, terraced identically, but the birdlife hasn't noticed the border. Kingfishers rattle upstream in winter; black kites circle overhead most months. Locals claim otters still breed under the railway bridge at Arante, though you'll need dawn patience and a flask of coffee.

Cycling works if you like your gradients short and nasty. The PO-532 skirts the valley rim then dives 250 metres to the water in less than three kilometres. Motorhomes use it as a test of brake maintenance. Road bikes need compact gearing; mountain bikes can follow farm tracks but expect to push when the gradient tilts past 15% and the surface turns to marble-sized gravel.

The Wine That Isn't Ribeiro

Every Spanish village has a wine story; Crecente's is unusually honest. The terraces qualify for Rías Baixas sub-zone Ribeiras do Miño, but you'd never know. Bodegas are stone sheds with corrugated roofs, fermenting tanks that look like dairy equipment, and farmers who sell you a five-litre jerry-can for twelve euros because "eso es lo que vale". The grape is mostly treixadura, giving whites that taste of green apple and faint fennel. Alcohol hovers around 11%, perfect lunchtime stuff that won't send you sideways into the gorge on the drive back.

If you want a label, track down Luis Anxo in Portela. His cellar door is the garage; ring the bell and he'll appear wiping oil from his hands. The 2022 has a nip of spritz and costs €4.50 a bottle. He won't offer tastings – "you either want it or you don't" – but he'll tell you which field it came from and why that slope never freezes.

Food stays resolutely inland. No octopus here, no theatrical shellfish. Order zorza empanada at O Palancas: rough-cut pork shoulder, plenty of pimentón, pastry that flakes like a good Cornish pasty. Eat it lukewarm with a plastic fork; it tastes better that way. River trout shows up in season, simply grilled, skin crisp, flesh the colour of pale salmon. Chips come as standard; ask for salad and you get lettuce, tomato, and a quartered hard-boiled egg dressed with olive oil sharp enough to make you pucker.

The Practical Bits That Matter

You need wheels. The nearest station is Ourense, 25 km west, and buses run roughly twice a day when they remember. Once here, park in the main square – it's free, unsigned, and nobody will clamp you. Mondays catch everyone out: both bars shut, the bakery pulls down its shutters, and the cash machine sometimes refuses to dispense anything smaller than a fifty. Stock up in Ourense or Verín before you arrive.

Phone signal vanishes in the valley folds. Download offline maps; the footpaths on Google are wishful thinking based on dry-stone walls that fell down in 1987. If you get properly lost, head uphill until you hit tarmac; from any ridge you can usually see the church tower and re-orientate.

Weather behaves like mountain climate even though you're not high – 200 m above sea level is enough to trap Atlantic cloud. Mornings start grey, burn off by eleven, then rebuild into spectacular thunderstorms that arrive at tea-time and vanish before supper. Pack a proper waterproof; the poncho you bought in Benidorm won't survive five minutes of Galician vertical rain.

Summer brings Portuguese weekenders who've discovered the river picnic spots. August afternoons sound like a Lisbon suburb: radios, footballs, kids shrieking in accents that swap s for sh. It's cheerful rather than crowded, but if you want the valley to yourself come in late September when the vines turn brass-yellow and the only noise is hunting dogs practising echo-location across the gorge.

Winter has its own rewards. Mist rises off the Miño like steam from a bath, and the terraces glow emerald against black oak trunks. Just don't attempt the back lanes after heavy rain – the clay turns to axle grease and even locals chain up their tractors.

Leaving Without the Gift-Shop Bag

Crecente won't give you a highlight reel. There's no single Instagram frame, no cathedral spire to tick off, no chef chasing a Michelin star. What it offers instead is the slow pleasure of a landscape that hasn't been reorganised for visitors: vines that predate democracy, river pools used by the same families for four generations, bars where your credit card stays in your pocket because nobody's bothered to buy the machine.

Drive out slowly. The road climbs past the last vineyard, then the valley disappears and you're back among eucalyptus and dairy cattle. Somewhere around the first bend you'll realise the river's still visible in the rear-view mirror, a silver thread glinting between hills that look, for a moment, like they might go on forever.