Tricio

The church door is locked at ten in the morning. That surprises most first-time visitors, because the west portal of San Martín is the size of a small cathedral and looks as if it ought to welcome pilgrims at any hour. Instead you must cross the empty plaza to Bar La Plaza, order a cortado, and ask for the llave. While the coffee arrives the owner fishes an iron key from a drawer the size of a shoebox, and suddenly you have private admission to one of the best-preserved twelfth-century façades in northern Spain. No ticket desk, no audio-guide, just you and half a tonne of carved stone 563 m above sea level.

A village that fits between two sips of wine

Tricio occupies barely a square kilometre of cereal terraces and cruzeiro vineyards between the Najerilla river and the limestone ridge of Moncalvillo. You can walk from the last house to the first vineyard in four minutes, which explains why most British motorists treat the place as a loo break on the drive from Bilbao to Burgos. That is a sensible instinct: the village is geographically convenient (90 min from Bilbao airport, 25 km south of Logroño) and architecturally top-heavy. One superb church, a handful of stone mansions with coat-of-arms lintels, and a fragment of Roman paving behind the cemetery constitute the cultural inventory. Anything more ambitious requires putting the car back on the road to Nájera or Santo Domingo de la Calzada.

Still, the stop repays a leisurely hour if you time it right. The west doorway of San Martín carries five archivolts decorated with acanthus, birds and what looks suspiciously like a mermaid holding a scroll. Inside, a Baroque high altar glints with gilt vines, a reminder that every Rioja church, whatever its age, eventually surrendered to the region’s favourite colour: wine red turned to gold. Light is thin at this altitude, so visit before midday when the portals still glow honey-coloured. Lock the door on your way out and return the key; honour system, Spanish style.

Walking tracks that smell of thyme and sulphur

Behind the church a stony lane climbs past allotments and into holm-oak scrub. Within ten minutes the view opens north-west across the Najerilla valley, a patchwork of tempranillo plots and sprinkler-green peppers. This is part of the GR-190 long-distance path, though only the first 3 km are relevant to day visitors. The route passes an abandoned gypsum quarry whose walls glitter like icing sugar; locals claim the dust keeps mosquitoes away in summer. Carry on another twenty minutes and you reach the Ermita de Nuestra Señora de los Arcos, an eleventh-century hermitage wedged into a cliff. The door is usually locked—no bar here to supply a key—but the porch gives shade and the limestone blocks smell faintly of struck matches after rain.

Turn back when you’ve had enough; the path is clear but there is no mobile signal and afternoon heat can top 36 °C before the Rioja wind arrives. Spring and autumn are kinder, bringing fennel, poppies and the risk only of an enthusiastic vineyard dog barking through a fence.

Wine without the theatre

Tricio itself has no bodega open to drop-ins, yet the village sits inside the Rioja Alta sub-zone where tempranillo keeps its acidity and alcohol stays a civilised 13.5 %. Call ahead to Bodegas David Moreno in nearby Badarán (10 min drive) and you can taste two crianzas and a white malvasía for €5, refundable if you buy a bottle. The staff prefer Spanish but will switch to careful English if you slow down and avoid cocktail metaphors. Weekends fill up with stag parties from Vitoria; book the 11 a.m. slot and you will have the cobbled courtyard to yourself.

If that sounds like effort, stay in the plaza. Bar La Plaza pours a 200 ml glass of crianza for €2.50 and will happily dish up grilled chicken and chips for the driver who can’t face tripe stew. The loo is inside; buy something first or you will be politely redirected to the lane behind the bins.

When the coach parties leave

Parking is the only daily drama. The plaza holds fifteen spaces, coaches for Chinese wine tourists claim four at 09:30, and by 11:00 the verge is lined with rental Seats. Arrive either before ten or after half-past eleven; otherwise you will perform an eleven-point turn while villagers watch from folding chairs. Monday is the quietest day—and the most frustrating, because the bar is closed and the church key is unavailable. Tuesday to Friday offers the best compromise: open bar, unlocked church, half-empty square.

Weather behaves like an inland mountain town even though Tricio is only an hour from the Atlantic. Frost can linger until 10 a.m. in February, while July nights stay warm enough to eat outside until midnight. If you are combining the village with Logroño’s tapas strip, bring a cardigan; the temperature drop between city and village can be 6 °C once the sun slips behind Moncalvillo.

Combine, don’t linger

British travel writers hunting “undiscovered Spain” sometimes try to stretch Tricio into a destination worth a whole afternoon. That is a mistake. After the church, the 2 km vineyard loop and a coffee you will have seen everything except the view from the cemetery, and that adds only another quarter of an hour. Treat the village as a palate cleanser between larger Rioja hits: morning in Laguardia’s walled medieval core, lunch in Tricio’s plaza, evening pinchos in Logroño’s Laurel street. The distances are trivial—25 km separate all three—and the altitude gain gives drivers a break from the A1 autopista toll.

Leave with the key still in your pocket and someone from Bar La Plaza will jog after you; forget to lock the church and no one seems bothered. That casual contract sums up Tricio: a place trusted to look after its own past, happy for you to borrow it for twenty minutes, equally happy if you simply use the car park, photograph the doorway and drive on. Rioja’s quiet side needs no more effort than that—and delivers rather more than you paid for.