~10.5 km circular · ~3.5 hours · moderate · Start: Belesar bridge, Chantada/O Saviñao
The signposted PR-G 183 is a 4.6 km traverse from the Belesar bridge up through the terraces and back down to the hamlet of A Veiga. It is excellent on its own terms. But the route that explains the Chantada subzone is the longer loop — about 10.5 km in total — that strings the official trail together with the PR-G 162 alternative and brings you back over the river. The full version is the one most local guides actually walk.
You start in Belesar, the village split between two municipalities and joined by a single bridge over the Miño. Almost immediately the path climbs past San Bartolomeu de Belesar and sets you among the vineyards. The yellow-and-white PR markings share the path with the yellow arrows of the Camino de Invierno, which can briefly confuse — follow the white-and-yellow until A Veiga.
The terraces here are the working version of what gets photographed from across the valley. Steel monorails for harvest crates run between the rows. The labour is visible in the slope itself. This is part of what the Chantada producers call the Milla de Oro, the most prized band of mencía and godello on this stretch of the Miño.
Roughly halfway, the path drops to O Pousadoiro and then to Pincelo — and Pincelo is the argument for taking the longer route. A small isolated hamlet at river level, almost no road access, its own embarcadero, a few traditional batuxos still moored. The bodega here is locally credited as Galicia’s first certified organic wine project. Pincelo is also one of the names that recurs in the testimony of villages submerged when the Belesar dam flooded the valley in 1963 — the present hamlet sits above the line, but the memory layer is dense here.
From A Veiga you continue to the Portotide bridge, cross to the south bank, and return to Belesar along a quiet road with the morning’s terraces now on the opposite side — the inversion is the point. The road stretch is around 3 km, low traffic, and reframes everything you walked through.
Spring and autumn are the obvious windows. Summer is doable but exposed: the vineyard sections offer almost no shade and the schist holds heat well into the evening. A shorter 7 km variant cuts the climb to Bexán and returns earlier; it loses the high traverse, keeps Pincelo, and is the right call on a hot day.
