Navia de Suarna

The morning bus from Lugo empties four passengers at the roadside bar in A Pobra de Navia, three kilometres short of Navia de Suarna itself. None complain; the driver needs room to turn his coach around, and the walk in gives newcomers a first taste of what the Ancares mountains do to distance. By the time the river comes into view, stone houses have already started to climb the slope as if searching for a place where the valley widens enough to let daylight linger.

Navia sits at the eastern edge of Lugo province, where the map turns dark with contour lines and the tarmac thins to single-track lanes. At 550 metres above sea level, the air is cooler than on the coast even in June, and the Atlantic weather that drenches Santiago arrives here tempered into long, silent mists. Winter is the dominant season; locals joke that summer is a Tuesday in August. The upside is empty trails and the kind of green that British walkers associate with Snowdonia rather than Spain.

Stone, Slate and the Smell of Woodsmoke

The village centre is a five-minute stroll from end to end, but the architecture rewards slowing down. Granite walls are roofed with wafer-thin slices of local slate, each overlapped like fish scales. Wooden balconies, once painted ox-blood red, now fade to terracotta; the grain has opened so wide you could count the tree rings. Look up and you’ll spot hórreos—raised granaries—balanced on mushroom-shaped stilts to keep mice out. They still store chestnuts, not souvenirs, and the lattice sides smell of last autumn’s smoke.

Between the houses run narrow lanes built for ox-carts, not SUVs. Drainage channels cut into the rock gurgle after every rainfall, and sudden staircases climb to front doors that open straight onto bedrooms—an arrangement that made sense when animals lived downstairs and body heat rose. The effect is less “chocolate box” than workaday museum, but the place is alive: a delivery van squeezes through, two old women debate the price of kale while leaning from opposite balconies, and the bar on the plaza opens at seven for coffee laced with aguardiente for anyone still chilled from the dawn.

Walking the Ancares Without the Crowds

Navia works best as a base rather than a destination in itself. From the church square, a way-marked lane heads south along the Navia river, passing abandoned watermills where nettles grow through the millstones. After forty minutes the tarmac gives way to a stone path that climbs through sweet chestnut and sessile oak. The gradient is steady rather than brutal, but 400 metres of ascent still feels like a proper morning’s work. At the top, the valley opens into a high pasture grazed by feral ponies and one stubborn cow. On a clear day you can pick out the copper-roofed monastery at Sobrado 60 kilometres away; more often the view is a shifting layer cake of cloud.

Maps show half a dozen circuits between 8 and 18 kilometres. The shortest, to the hamlet of A Xesteira and back, delivers a slice of everything: river flats, chestnut forest, and a final haul up a Roman-era paved stretch that reminds you why the legions gave up on these hills. Longer routes reach 1,500-metre ridges where Cantabrian brown bears have been spotted; take the recommended GPS track because stone cairns have a habit of wandering in goat country. Whatever the distance, pack a jacket—even July can flip to 12 °C once the sun slips behind the peaks.

River Trout, Smoked Sausage and Other Calories

Hunger is the best sauce after a 600-metre climb, and Navia’s kitchens stick to mountain logic: heavy on protein, light on fuss. The local speciality is androlla, a softly smoked pork sausage that tastes like a mellower kipper. It appears in winter stews with potatoes and turnip tops, or sliced thin and warmed in cider for the October magosto chestnut roast. River trout, caught under strict daily quotas, is simply grilled with lemon and olive oil; the flesh is firmer than the farmed stuff sold in British supermarkets and arrives head-on, so practise your filleting.

Sunday fair-day—held on the second Sunday and again on the 29th of each month—draws stallholders from across the province. Octopus is boiled in copper cauldrons the diameter of tractor tyres, then snipped with scissors and sprinkled with sweet pimentón. A paper plateful costs eight euros and is designed for sharing, though forks are optional. For edible souvenirs, look for Ancares honey sold in reused jam jars; the flavour is floral without the throat-catching sweetness of heather honey, and customs will let it through if you declare.

When the Valley Closes In

Honesty requires admitting the drawbacks. Public transport is patchy: one daily bus from Lugo, none on Sundays. A hire car is almost essential; the nearest fuel is twenty minutes away in Becerreá, and the single village ATM dispenses cash only when the phone line feels like it. Mobile reception fades two kilometres out of town, so download offline maps before leaving the A-6 motorway. Fair-day clogs the only car park by eleven; latecomers end up reversing half a kilometre until they find a verge wide enough for a three-point turn.

Weather can switch from T-shirt to fleece in the time it takes to finish a café con leche. Winter brings snow that turns the LU-722 into a toboggan run; chains are compulsory and the odd lorry still ends up in the river. Spring is glorious until the gorse blooms and footpaths become tunnels of bramble—long trousers and gaiters aren't overkill. Mid-summer, meanwhile, is short enough that locals celebrate the feast of San Roque on 16 August with a procession, brass band and fireworks that echo around the valley like rifle shots.

Leaving Before the Mist Settles

Most visitors stay two nights, long enough to walk one high ridge and one river flat, eat octopus on fair-day and drive the corkscrew road to Piornedo to photograph the palloza stone huts with their thatched roofs weighed down by stones. After that, either the silence hooks you or the curfew does; evenings end early here, and the brightest light after ten o’clock is the petrol station sign flickering across the valley. Check out at dawn and you’ll meet the baker loading loaves into a van whose odometer stopped years ago. He’ll nod, pass you a still-warm baguette, and tell you the road to the motorway is clear—unless the cow herd’s on the move. Then you’ll wait. Mountains, not clocks, still set the timetable.