Covelo

The fog lifts just enough to reveal a granite cross rising from dew-soaked grass. Somewhere below, a tractor coughs to life. This is morning in Covelo—not a single village but a loose constellation of hamlets scattered across the A Paradanta hills, where 2,500 souls inhabit more cows than houses. No cathedral spires here. No souvenir shops. Just the slow rhythm of a place that refuses to rush for anyone.

Granite, Water and the Art of Looking Sideways

British visitors expecting a tidy plaza mayor with matching geraniums will feel disorientated. Covelo has no centre to speak of; administration happens wherever the council happens to meet that week. Instead you'll find parish churches that double as village clocks—San Salvador de Loureiro with its weather-beaten atrium, Santa María de Tebra whose bells still mark the hours for fieldworkers. The architecture isn't grand, but the stone tells stories. Run your fingers along the grooves of a 16th-century hórreo—those raised granaries on mushroom-shaped stilts—and you'll feel the wear of countless harvests. Each parish keeps its own scale: some barely a dozen houses, others straggling along valley floors where cows wander across the road with the confidence of animals who know they have right of way.

Water shapes everything. The Deva and its tributaries have carved gentle valleys through schist and granite, leaving flat bottoms where vegetables grow and steep sides clothed in oak and chestnut. Follow any lane downhill and you'll hit a river; follow it upstream and you'll find ruins of watermills that once ground the local corn. Most are roofless now, their millstones cracked and green with lichen, but the channels still run black with peat after heavy rain. Spring brings the best flow—April waterfalls thunder loud enough to drown out mobile signals, which frankly feels like a blessing.

Walking Into the Serra do Suído

The Suído massif rises to 1,038 metres—not high by alpine standards, but enough to generate its own weather. What looks like a twenty-minute drive on the map becomes an hour of switchbacks through gorse and broom. Park at the abandoned ski station (yes, really—two drag lifts rusting since the 1980s) and climb the service track. On clear days you'll see the Ría de Vigo glinting thirty kilometres south; more often the view dissolves into cloud that beads on your jacket and drips from oak leaves. Summer hikers should start early—by 11 a.m. the heat builds in the valleys and the only shade belongs to pine plantations that smell of warm resin and fox scat.

Paths aren't graded here. The PR-G 163 way-marking appears sporadically—yellow dashes painted by farmers who had more pressing things to finish. A proper OS-style map helps, but local knowledge helps more. Ask at the bar in Loureiro; if Miguel's serving, he'll sketch a route on the back of a lottery ticket that includes where the wild blueberries ripen and which gate has the temperamental horse. Take his advice about footwear—after rain the granite slabs turn into ice rinks and the cattle have carved channels that'll twist an ankle faster than you can say "compensation claim".

What You'll Actually Eat (and What You Won't)

Forget tasting menus. Covelo's kitchens run on caldo gallego—hearty broth thick with potatoes, greens and chunks of chorizo that tastes nothing like the supermarket stuff in Swindon. Thursdays mean cocido, a belt-loosening stew that arrives in three acts: first the broth, then the chickpeas, finally the meat that’s been simmering since dawn. Vegetarians get eggs—usually scrambled with garlic scapes in spring, or with wild mushrooms in October when locals disappear into the woods with wicker baskets and the sort of knives that'd raise eyebrows at Heathrow.

Pulpo fairs happen on random weekends; follow the smoke to find polbo á feira served on wooden boards, sprinkled with rock salt and hot paprika that stains your fingers orange. The wine comes in white ceramic bowls—don't ask for a glass, just drink. A three-course menú do día costs around €12 including coffee; bread arrives whether you ordered it or not, and you'll pay for it too. Tipping isn't expected, but leaving the small change from your twenty feels right.

Seasons of Mud and Miracles

April and May deliver the greenest hills you'll ever see—verdant doesn't begin to cover it. Camellias bloom in abandoned gardens, their petals bruised pink against wet stone. This is walking weather: cool mornings, afternoon showers that blow over in twenty minutes, and nights cold enough to justify the wood fires that perfume every village. Come June the grasses turn gold and the first tourists appear with walking poles and expressions of mild shock at the gradient. July and August get hot—properly hot, 35 °C in the valleys—though nights cool enough to sleep if you've booked somewhere with thick stone walls. September brings spider webs jewelled with dew and the smell of fermenting grapes from small plots that survive against all commercial logic.

October equals mushrooms. Locals guard their spots like state secrets; join a guided foray or stick to the signed route from the tourist office (open Tuesday and Thursday mornings, or whenever someone remembers to unlock it). November ushers in rains that can last forty days without exaggeration—rivers swell brown and furious, tracks turn to chocolate mousse. Winter has its own austere beauty: bare chestnut trees etched against low cloud, wood smoke drifting across empty roads, and the occasional dusting of snow that sends children scraping slopes on plastic bags because proper sledges are for people with money to burn.

Getting Here, Getting Lost

Santiago airport sits ninety minutes away by hire car—take the AP-9 to Pontevedra then peel inland on the PO-255, a road that narrows alarmingly after the town of A Cañiza. Public transport exists but requires monkish patience: two daily buses from Pontevedra, timed for market days rather than tourist convenience. Miss the 14:30 return and you're spending the night whether you packed a toothbrush or not. Driving remains essential if you want to range beyond a single valley; fill the tank in A Cañiza because village pumps close at 20:00 and don't reopen on Sundays.

Phone signal fades in every third hollow—download offline maps before you leave wifi range. Google Street View hasn't bothered with most lanes, which is surprisingly liberating. Getting lost is part of the deal; so is discovering that the elderly woman at the crossroads knows three words of English ("Hello, good, bye") and still manages to direct you to the waterfall you didn't know existed.

Leave the drones at home. Nothing kills the hush of an oak grove faster than buzzing plastic, and the farmer whose cattle you're filming won't appreciate the intrusion. Pack a light raincoat even in August, and carry cash—many bars lack card machines and regard contactless as some sort of urban conspiracy.

Covelo won't tick the usual boxes. There's no castle, no Michelin stars, no gift shop flogging fridge magnets. What you get instead is the slow revelation of a landscape that has sustained people for two millennia, give or take a Roman road and a few abandoned zinc mines. Stay long enough and the distinctions between villages blur; you'll measure distance in cuestas (hills) rather than kilometres, and judge time by church bells rather than phone screens. Whether that's your idea of heaven or a special sort of purgatory depends entirely on how you define escape.