Riós

The chestnut trees turn first. By mid-October their leaves are the colour of burnt sugar, and the slopes above the Lima valley look as though someone has upended a packet of Fox's Glacier sweets across the hills. This is when Riós makes most sense. The tiny municipality—thirty-odd hamlets scattered across 62 km²—has barely 1,300 permanent residents, yet it supports several million trees, most of them sweet chestnut. Locals still call the fruit pilongas, and if you walk anywhere near an era (the stone threshing floor that every hamlet keeps) you'll catch the smell of them roasting on a wood fire sharp enough to make your eyes water.

The View from the National 525

Riós sits on a ridge between the Lima and the smaller Arnoia, 45 minutes south-east of Ourense city. The last stretch leaves the autopista at Allariz and climbs the OU-540, a road that narrows with every kilometre until two cars can barely pass without one reversing to the nearest lay-by. Sat-navs lose nerve here; phone signal dribbles away entirely. What you get instead are sudden sightlines into Portugal—only 12 km away—and stone walls the colour of wet slate, each topped with a comb of moss. The altitude tops 700 m, high enough for the air to feel rinsed and for night frosts to arrive three weeks earlier than on the coast.

There is no town centre, just a string of parishes—A Pobra, Ferreirós, Paradela, San Xoán—linked by lanes so quiet that the loudest noise is often your own breathing. Houses are low, granite, with galleries open to the weather so firewood can season under the eaves. Many still carry the family name painted in white on the gable: Casa dos Vázquez, Casa da Fonte. If the door is open you may see a lareira, the open hearth that heats both food and living room, its chimney blackened by decades of oak and chestnut logs.

What You’re Actually Looking At

Visitors who arrive expecting a plaza mayor and a selfie-ready façade usually drive straight through, disappointed. The architecture is domestic, not monumental; the pleasure is cumulative, not instant. Start at the parish church of Santa María de Riós, a 1750s stone box with a single Baroque bell arch that leans slightly west. Inside, the walls are the colour of weak tea, and votive candles cost €1.50—drop the coins into the tin and the warden will nod from his bench without looking up from the Lotería Primitiva ticket he is filling in.

From the church door a paved lane drops to the regato das Hortas, a stream that once powered three mills. Only one wheel survives, half-submerged in cow parsley, but the race is still carved into the rock like a vertebra. Follow the path uphill and within ten minutes you’re under sweet-chestnut canopy so dense that the GPS thinks you’ve entered a tunnel. In late October villagers lay blue plastic sheets under the trunks and shake the branches with a long pole called a pica; the nuts thud down like hail. Foreigners are welcome to watch, not to harvest—every tree belongs to someone, and boundaries are remembered the way sailors remember reefs.

Eating Like a Borderer

The kitchen here answers to altitude, not sea. Lunch might be caldo de castañas—chestnut soup thickened with pork rib and unto (the local back-fat)—followed by lacón con grelos, shoulder of pork simmered with turnip tops that taste like sprouting broccoli with an attitude. Beef comes from cebón, young steers fattened on hay cut from the same meadows you walked through; the flavour is deeper than anything the Basque Country ships to Borough Market. Dessert is bica layered with roasted chestnut purée, served warm so the lard in the pastry half-melts. A glass of augardente—the clear grape spirit that Galicians call orujo—arrives without asking; refuse once, accept the second thimbleful, or you’ll insult the house.

Vegetarians survive, but only just. The nearest menú del día is in neighbouring Xunqueira de Ambía, 11 km away, where the Bar O Cruce will swap meat for eggs and pimientos de padrón if you ask before noon. Otherwise stock up in Ourense: Riós has a single shop, opens 09:00–13:30, bread sold out by 11.

Walking Without Waymarks

There are no signed PR trails, which keeps the crowds away but demands a little homework. The tourist office in Allariz (open Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00–14:00) sells a 1:25,000 topographic map for €6 that shows every camiño real—the old drovers’ tracks that linked winter and summer pastures. One easy loop starts at Ferreirós, climbs through abandoned terraces to the Alto da Serra at 820 m, then descends past a ruined palloza (circular stone hut) used until the 1960s for storing chestnuts. The round trip is 7 km, 250 m of ascent, and you’ll meet more cows than humans. After rain the clay sticks to boots like molasses; carry a stick or you’ll gain 2 kg of sole-weight within a mile.

Mountain bikers use the same web of lanes. Gradient is gentle by Galician standards—nothing above 10 %—but surfaces switch without warning from packed grit to fist-sized loose slate. Hire bikes in Ourense (Ciclos Coya, €25 a day) and bring spare inner tubes; the nearest bike shop is 40 km away.

When to Bother, When to Stay Away

April–May brings orchid explosions in the hay meadows and temperatures in the low twenties—perfect for walking, lethal for hay-fever sufferers. Mid-July to mid-August the ridge bakes: 32 °C at noon, zero shade on the lanes, and every fonte (stone spring) becomes a social club. This is when emigrants return from Switzerland and Madrid, car boots full of supermarket ice-cream, and the evening paseo lasts until midnight. Accommodation within the municipality amounts to two casas rurales—Casa da Cerca sleeps six, €90 a night, wood-burner included—and a clutch of self-catering pazos booked through the provincial website. If you need a pool, stay in Allariz and day-trip; the drive is 25 minutes and you’ll still hear cowbells when you close the car door.

November is the sweet spot. Colours peak around the 5th, the magosto fiestas spill wood-smoke into every lane, and you can buy a kilo of roasted chestnuts for €3 from a woman who sets up a brazier outside the church. Rain is probable, but showers pass quickly; carry a light shell and you’ll have the ridge to yourself between bursts. Winter proper starts late December: expect sleet, black ice on the OU-540, and the odd blocked pass after a southerly storm. Chains are not legally required but highly sensible; locals keep them in the boot from Christmas until Easter.

Getting There Without Tears

From the UK the sanest route is Santiago de Compostela airport, served year-round by Ryanair from Stansted and easyJet from Gatwick. Pick up a hire car—book an automatic if you’re not happy with hill-starts on 1-in-6 gradients—and allow 1 hour 20 minutes south on the AP-53 and A-52. Petrol is cheaper at the supermarket pumps in Ourense city than on the motorway. Public transport exists but defeats most outsiders: one daily bus from Ourense to Xunqueira, then a taxi (pre-book, €18) for the final 12 km. Miss the connection and you’re spending the night in a town with one bar and no cash machine.

Parting Shots

Riós will not change your life. It will, however, recalibrate your sense of scale: how small a community can be and still feel coherent, how much landscape one can see when phone reception dies, how quietly a place can function if it never bought into the idea that every view needs a souvenir shop. Come with waterproof shoes and time to spare; leave before you start quoting rural paradise clichés. The best souvenir is the smell of wood-smoke that lingers on your jacket—impossible to bottle, free to carry home, and gone after the first London rain.