Toén

Stone, Vine and Tractor Dust

The first thing you notice is the sound of tyres on gravel. A farmer in a battered Land Rover gives a two-finger salute off the steering wheel, then swings wide to let you pass on a lane barely wider than the car. Vine terraces drop away on both sides, their granite retaining walls the colour of old bone. Somewhere below, the River Miño glints, but up here the view is chopped into rectangles of green and brown, each plot no bigger than a tennis court. This is Toén: not a postcard village with a neat plaza, but a scatter of hamlets across 70 square kilometres of Galician hillside, where the only traffic jam involves a tractor and a flock of chickens.

There is no centre to speak of. The ayuntamiento sits in A Igrexa, a clutch of houses around a church and a bench. Posters advertise the next fiesta parroquial—dates crossed out and rewritten in felt-tip—while a bar that doubles as the village shop keeps Spanish hours: open at seven for coffee and zumo de melocotón, shut again by six unless the owner’s niece is visiting. If you arrive expecting pavements and gift shops, you’ll leave disappointed. Come with a full tank and half a day to kill, and the place starts to make sense.

Romanesque in the Wild

Drive five minutes south-east to Razamonde and pull in by the stone cross. The church of San Xoán squats behind a cemetery wall like a stubborn bulldog: twelfth-century masonry, slate roof, bell-cote added later when someone decided God needed amplification. The west door is pure Romanesque—round arch, zig-zag carving, the odd beast with too many legs—but the rest is patchwork, patched again after storms, fires and the occasional Civil War bullet. Push the heavy door (it sticks in damp weather) and the smell is instant: incense, candle wax and the faint sweetness of chrysanthemums left over from All Saints’. No ticket desk, no audio guide, just a printed sheet laminated by the font, curling at the edges.

Outside, the graveyard tells its own story. Granite tombs lean at tipsy angles; plastic flowers fade from ultraviolet glare. A woman in house slippers waters geraniums at her husband’s plot. She nods, half curious, half protective—tourists with cameras are still novel enough to warrant a stare. Ask about the vines beyond the wall and she’ll tell you the castas are treixadura and loureira, harvested in mid-September when the whole hillside smells like pressed apples. She might even point you towards Lebosende, another church, another lane, another ten minutes of switchbacks where the tarmac narrows and the sat-nav gives up.

A Movable Feast of Granite

Toén’s real monuments don’t come with plaques. They appear as you potter: a stone granary on stilts, its corners nibbled by livestock; a wayside crucifix smothered in lichen; a spring where water trickles into a trough deep enough for buckets. These things aren’t arranged for visitors—they’re simply still here, doing the job they were built for five centuries ago. Park where the lane widens and walk. A five-minute stroll between terraces brings you to a bodega half buried in the hill, its wooden doors secured with a padlock the size of an orange. Peer through the gap and you’ll see fermentation tanks from the 1960s, labels peeling like sunburnt skin.

Serious walkers can thread together the hamlets on farm tracks—no way-marking worth the name, so download the Galician government’s 1:25,000 map before you set out. A gentle circuit from Razamonde to San Cristovo de Lamas and back is 7 km, with 180 m of cumulative ascent: enough to justify a second croissant at breakfast, not enough to require walking poles. After rain the paths turn to porridge; trainers suffice in summer, boots essential in November when the bajancas—north-westerly storms—sweep in off the Atlantic and the Miño valley fills with cloud.

When the Day Ends at Six

Food is farmhouse fare, served in private houses that hang a blue napkin from the window to signal they’re open. Inside, the menu is whatever María bought at the morning market. Expect caldo gallego thick with turnip tops, followed by pulpo snipped with scissors into pink-edged coins, dusted with pimentón and served on a wooden platter the diameter of a dustbin lid. Vegetarians get empanada de raxo—pork and red pepper encased in bread—because the concept of meat-free Galicia hasn’t quite arrived. A bottle of local Ribeiro costs less than a London pint; at 11% alcohol you can drink two and still remember your car registration.

Time your visit for Sunday and you’ll witness the weekly social whirl: mass at twelve, aperitivo in the bar, families sitting on car boots while children chase feral cats. By six the shutters come down. If you haven’t booked a room, you’ll be driving back to Ourense in the dark, dodging hedgehogs on the N-120. The nearest place with evening life is the medieval riverside town of Ribadavia, twenty minutes west, where restaurants stay open until the improbably late hour of half past ten.

Practicalities Without the Bullet Points

Fly to Santiago de Compostela with Ryanair or EasyJet, pick up a hire car and head east on the AP-53. Leave the motorway at Ourense and follow signs for Celanova; the turn-off for Toén appears after 5 km of industrial estates and furniture warehouses. Public transport exists—a Monbus leaves Ourense bus station twice daily—but timetables assume you have the patience of a medieval monk. A taxi from the city centre costs €18 if you negotiate before getting in; Uber hasn’t arrived this far inland.

Stay at Casa Rural A Devesa, a converted farmhouse on the municipality’s western edge. Rooms are €65 a night, breakfast included: tostada rubbed with tomato, coffee strong enough to wake the dead, and homemade marmalade from somebody’s pomelo tree. The nearest hotel with English-speaking reception is ten minutes away in Ourense’s suburbs, handy if you need someone to explain how the shower works. Either way, book ahead in September during the wine harvest, when every cousin within a fifty-kilometre radius comes home to help.

Parting Shot

Toén will never feature on a glossy cover entitled “Spain’s Secret Villages” because it refuses to behave like one. There is no dramatic cliff, no Moorish castle, no artisan ice-cream parlour doing dulce de leche flavour. What you get instead is continuity: the same families tending the same plots, the same granite walls pushing back against the hillside, the same smell of fermenting grapes drifting across the lanes every autumn. Visit once and you might wonder what all the fuss is about. Visit twice—especially when the vines turn yellow and the morning mist lies in the Miño—and you’ll understand why some maps are better drawn by memory than by satellites.