Climb to the keep of the 15th-century castle for the view over both rivers

Walk the walled village and work out that the roofs and the walls are the same slate

Work out why a frontier town was needed here and who it was facing

Drive up to the Lago de Sanabria, which is a short way up the valley

Go on into the Sierra Segundera, which runs into the Portuguese Montesinho

Puebla de Sanabria stands on a hill where the Tera and the Castro meet, with a 15th-century castle of the counts of Benavente on the highest point and a walled village of stone and slate below it — one of the best-preserved in this corner of Zamora, right against the Portuguese border. It was a frontier town for centuries and it looks like one. The Lago de Sanabria is a short drive up the valley, and the Sierra Segundera behind it runs into the Portuguese Montesinho.

Puebla de Sanabria: A Castle Over Two Rivers

Swim in the largest glacial lake in the Iberian peninsula, which is what it is mainly used for now

Work out the numbers: 3.47 square kilometres, 53 metres deep, cut by a glacier fifteen kilometres long

Find the moraine arcs downstream of the lake, which are the ice's terminal deposits

Look for striations and roches moutonnées on the rock around the shore

Walk up to the Laguna de los Peces above the lake, which is the same glaciation higher up

Sanabria is the largest glacial lake in the Iberian peninsula — 3.47 square kilometres at about a thousand metres, 53 metres deep in its deepest basin, gouged out during the Würm glaciation. The Tera glacier reaching what is now Ribadelago was nearly fifteen kilometres long and over three hundred metres thick, and it picked up the Cárdena and Segundera tongues on the way, which is what gave it the power to dig this hole. The ice went about twelve thousand years ago, apparently quite quickly, leaving hanging valleys, roches moutonnées, striations and concentric moraine arcs downstream.

Lago de Sanabria: A Glacier Left a Lake

Walk to Rio de Onor, the schist village on the Spanish border in Montesinho Natural Park, created in 1979 and home to one of the Iberian Peninsula's most important wolf populations

Follow a Montesinho trail looking for wolf tracks, with a local guide if you can

Look for golden eagles above the park's oak and chestnut slopes

Visit the Biological Park of Vinhais on the park's edge

Observe diverse wildlife in one of Portugal's largest protected areas

Montesinho Natural Park Wildlife Watching

Be in position on a ridge before first light with a scope, which is the only way this works

Work out the scale of the reserve: about 70,000 hectares, continuing into Portugal as the Serra de Montesinho

Learn to read the ground — tracks, scat and kill sites tell you more in a morning than an evening of looking

Listen at dusk, because you are far more likely to hear wolves than to see them

Talk to the local shepherds about what living alongside the population actually involves

Look for red and roe deer as well — the wolves are here because the prey is

The Sierra de la Culebra runs across north-west Zamora to the Portuguese border, where it continues as the Serra de Montesinho — roughly 70,000 hectares, of which 61,305 are a Site of Community Importance and 67,340 a Regional Hunting Reserve. The tops barely clear a thousand metres, with Peña Mira the highest at 1,241. It holds one of the densest Iberian wolf populations in western Europe, and it is the most reliable place on the continent to see a wild wolf — which still means being on a ridge before dawn with a scope and a good deal of patience.

Sierra de la Culebra: Wolf Country

Eat Posta Mirandesa, the protected-origin beef of the Mirandesa breed, in Miranda do Douro

Try alheira, the smoked sausage of Mirandela, in the town where it is made

Taste the olive oil of Trás-os-Montes in Valpaços, a protected-origin oil

Eat folar, the Easter meat bread of Valpaços, at a bakery in the town

Experience the unique flavors of Portugal's remote northeast

Trás-os-Montes Culinary Journey

Go into the church of Santiago, consecrated in 937, the only building left of Genadio's monastery

Walk the lanes of the village, its old stone houses kept round the church

Walk into the Valle del Silencio to the cave of Saint Genadio

Look for the Roman water channels in the valley

Peñalba de Santiago is a small stone village high in the Aquilianos mountains above Ponferrada, built round one of the jewels of Mozarabic architecture: the church of Santiago, begun on the initiative of Saint Genadio of Astorga and consecrated in 937 by his disciple Abbot Salomón. It is the only building left standing of a monastery that has vanished. These mountains were so full of hermits and monasteries from the 8th century on that they were called the Leonese Thebaid. Below the village the Valle del Silencio runs up to the foot of Pico Tuerto, 2,051 metres, past the cave of Saint Genadio and the remains of Roman water channels.

Peñalba de Santiago: A Mozarabic Church in the Valley of Silence

Go to the Orellán viewpoint and look down over what is essentially an industrial landscape two thousand years old

Work out what ruina montium means: water driven into galleries at pressure until the mountain collapsed from inside

Walk into the Orellán or La Cuevona galleries and see the tunnels the water was forced through

Find Lake Carucedo and work out that it is made of mining spoil

Work out the scale of the hydraulics: over 400 kilometres of channels, built to demolish a mountain

Las Médulas is the largest open-cast gold mine of the entire Roman empire, and what is left of it is a landscape of red sand peaks and gorges now half covered in chestnut and oak. The Romans began working here under Augustus, who personally directed most of the campaigns in this region between 26 and 19 BC, because gold was needed for the new aureus coinage. The method was ruina montium: over 400 kilometres of channels brought water into galleries cut inside the mountain until the pressure burst it apart. The spoil created Lake Carucedo. It became a World Heritage Site and a protected cultural asset in 1996.

Las Médulas: The Mountain Rome Washed Away

Find the frieze on Santiago and work out that the figures below Christ are ordinary trades

Find the bulls on the portal of Santa María del Camino and the legend behind them

Read what Aymeric Picaud wrote about this town in the 12th century and see whether it still fits

Find out who the Infantes de Carrión were and what they do in the Poema de Mio Cid

Walk a stretch of the Camino out of town, which crosses seventeen kilometres of nothing to Calzadilla

Carrión was one of the great towns of the Camino Francés — Aymeric Picaud's 12th-century pilgrim guide describes it as prosperous and full of bread, wine, meat and everything — and it has two Romanesque churches with frieze sculpture of the first rank. Santiago has a frieze of Christ in Majesty with the trades of the town carved beneath it, and Santa María del Camino has bulls carved on its portal from a local legend about a tribute of a hundred maidens. The town also gave Spanish literature the Infantes de Carrión, the villains of the Poema de Mio Cid.

Carrión de los Condes: Romanesque on the Camino

Go into the basilica of the Virgen del Prado and work out how many centuries of tile are on the walls

Watch a workshop throw and paint, and work out how much of the design vocabulary is Islamic in origin

Find out who Jan Floris was and what Italian technique he brought here around 1558

Find out what UNESCO inscribed in 2019 and which Mexican towns share the listing

Go on to El Puente del Arzobispo, which is part of the same inscription

Talavera has made glazed earthenware for five centuries, and the design, forms, glazes and decoration are Islamic in origin — plant and animal motifs that shifted to human figures under the Christian kingdoms. It took on industrial weight from the 16th century, and in about 1558 the Flemish master Jan Floris brought Italian technique into the workshops. Its commercial monopoly fought Seville for centuries and then lost ground to Alcora in the late 18th; the French army destroyed the kilns and factories between 1810 and 1812. UNESCO inscribed it in 2019 together with Puebla and Tlaxcala in Mexico, as one tradition across two continents. The basilica of the Virgen del Prado in the town is covered in the tiles, inside and out.