Camiño Vreeiro
In the region there are beautiful natural sites, places as anonymous as they are omnipresent, in a land where each path, each road, are in themselves works of appreciable beauty where once the bountiful mother nature and the wise and respectful hand of the man of the village were perfectly combined and united.
A path, son of tradition and history of this country of trades, is the one known as “Camino Vreeiro” (Vreeiro Way).
This route, also known as the “arrieiros” route, was created in the Middle Ages as an alternative to the routes that passed through more densely populated areas, in order to escape tolls and other commercial taxes. It climbed practically in one go from Ribeiro to Santiago, with hardly any secondary branches, and entered the region of Montes through the parish of Doade in Bearicense, after passing through 20 kilometres along a diagonal line that separated the domains of the monasteries of Melón and Aciveiro.
It crossed the areas of Porto de Rodeiros, Laxa Blanca and Portela de la Cruz, in the Suído mountain range, and one of the few branches led to the hermitage at the summit of Santo Domingo. After passing the Romanesque bridge of Ricobanca, next to a beautiful example of a mill with a stone masonry roof, it went to Mount Seixo and then to the valley of Alfonsín (Presqueiras), followed by San Miguel, Morgade and Folgoso, crossing the Lérez by the Ponte Parada, going up through Lama Ferrada to the area of Santa Marina de Castrelo, where the 15th century lanzal Torre de Alarma de la Barciela is preserved in good condition. In the final stretch of Terra de Montes, it passed through Vieiro (another place name etymologically linked to the road itself), Liñares, Mámoa, Cima de la Costa, las Baiucas, Quintillán, Rúa, Crucero and Fonte Blanca.
In the Mámoa (Castrelo) there is a field with more than 20 burial mounds on the side of this old road.
The Vreeiro Way is yet to be signposted, and its route, of about 20 kilometres, crosses the Terra de Montes from south to north. It is also the route where the typical dish of Forcarei’s gastronomy, the Richada, was created.
