Serra do Suído

Serra do Suído rises as a natural border between the provinces of Pontevedra and Ourense, spanning the municipalities of A Lama, Fornelos de Montes and Covelo on the Pontevedra side, and Avión and Beariz in Ourense. Its highest point reaches 1,151 metres at O Faro de Avión, a mountain lookout from which, on clear days, the three Galician estuaries of Vigo, Pontevedra and Arousa can be seen outlined against the Atlantic. The range belongs to the Dorsal Gallega, Galicia's geological backbone, and its rounded mid-mountain profile alternates heather and gorse scrub on the heights with pedunculate oak groves, birch patches and pine plantations on the slopes, while riparian forests line the streams and tributaries that feed rivers like the Verdugo.

One of the defining features of Serra do Suído is its herds of feral Galician mountain horses — garranos — that roam freely across the upper grasslands. Every summer, local communities organise the curros or rapas das bestas, an ancestral tradition documented since the pre-Roman Castro period in which the horses are gathered, branded and dewormed. Bronze Age petroglyphs carved into the sierra's granite show equestrian figures, evidence that the bond between these mountains and their horses spans millennia. The most famous rapa takes place at nearby Sabucedo, but smaller curros on the Suído itself keep the custom alive in a more intimate setting.

The landscape is a mosaic of textures: granite boulders sculpted by water and frost into rounded shapes, peat bogs where sphagnum moss thrives, meadows that blaze yellow with gorse flowers in June, and oak woods so thickly carpeted in moss that the air feels permanently damp. The scent of wet earth and pine resin accompanies every outing, especially on autumn mornings when mist pools in the valleys and leaves the summits clear. Wildlife includes Iberian wolf, which maintains a presence in the range, alongside fox, wild boar and roe deer, with goshawk and sparrowhawk hunting through the woodlands.

For visitors, Serra do Suído offers lightly trodden hiking routes through territory where walking for hours without meeting another person is common. Trails connect stone hamlets with hórreos and cruceiros, some preserving their 18th-century rural Galician architecture intact. The area lacks large-scale tourist infrastructure, making it a genuine off-grid destination: scattered rural guesthouses, village taverns serving octopus, lacón con grelos and corn empanada, and a silence broken only by wind through the scrub and the occasional whinny of horses on the ridgeline.