El Far d'Empordà

The tractor stops outside the bar. The driver leaves the engine running, disappears inside for two minutes, emerges with a cortado in a proper glass, and rumbles off towards the wheat. Nobody looks up. This is El Far d'Empordà, 44 m above sea level and a world away from the Costa Brava caravan queues only 20 minutes east.

A bell tower instead of a coast

The name means “lighthouse”, yet the nearest surf is a 15-minute drive. Here the beacon is the stone tower of Santa Maria, visible for kilometres across dead-flat cereal fields. The church itself is a workmanlike Gothic-to-Baroque patch-up rather than a must-see monument; what matters is how it organises daily life. The 11 o’clock bell marks coffee time, the 8 o’clock calls the men in from the fields, and on summer evenings the steps fill with teenagers sharing tins of Estrella while grandparents occupy the benches in strict rotation.

Walk the grid of four streets and you’ll see stone portals carved with 1778 or 1932, some freshly repointed, others cracked and sporting a satellite dish. Flowerpots are watered religiously; a retired Seat 600 gathers dust under a carport. It is tidy, lived-in, and obstinately ordinary – a relief after the coastal strip’s rental apartments.

What the plain gives you

The municipality sits in the middle of a patchwork of wheat, barley and orchards that supplies flour to Figueres bakeries and apples to Girona markets. Irrigation channels laid out in the 19th century still divide the plots; herons stand on the sluice gates, red-legged partridges sprint along the embankments. A 6-km loop north-east to neighbouring Vilaür follows a gravel farm track so level you can hold a conversation while cycling. In April the verges are fluorescent yellow with fennel; by July the stubble glints like brass and the air smells of dry thyme.

There are no signed trails, no visitor centre, and scarcely any shade, so start early and take more water than you think you’ll need. A competent walker can stitch together lanes to the Romanesque chapel of Sant Miquel de Cruïlles (30 min by bike, 1 h 20 on foot) where the door is usually unlocked and the only sound is swallows echoing under the barrel vault.

Eating what the fields produce

El Far’s solitary restaurant, Can Ventura on Carrer Major, opens only for lunch and shuts on Tuesdays. The €14 menú del dia might start with a bowl of chickpeas and botifarra sausage, finish with crema catalana burnt to order. Locals arrive at 2 pm sharp; if you turn up at 3:30 the kitchen is mopping up. Evening meals are trickier – the bar can rustle up a sandwich, but most visitors drive the 12 km to Figueres where La Taverna del Trobadour serves duck with figs without breaking the €25 mark.

Wine drinkers should note the DO Empordà tasting room in nearby Mollet de Peralada (10 min by car, free entry). Garnatxa blanca from slate hills north-west of here ages better than most southern French equivalents, and the staff pour three generous samples without expecting a purchase.

Using the village as a base rather than a destination

Staying overnight makes sense only if you hire a car or bring bikes. The weekday bus from Figueres arrives at 13:15 and leaves at 14:00; that is your lot. accommodation is limited to three self-catering houses clustered round the old school playground (€90–€120 a night for two, minimum three nights in high season). Interiors are stone-white minimalism with rainfall showers; outside you get dawn chorus and the smell of manure instead of chlorine.

Within 25 minutes’ drive you can reach Empúries’ Greek ruins before the tour coaches, or reach the long sandy sweep of Sant Martí d’Empúries where the water is cleaner than the better-known beaches of L’Escala but the car park still costs €6 a day. Back inland, the medieval hill town of Pals has photogenic ramparts and overpriced paella; neighbouring Fontanilles offers ridge-top views of rice paddies without the coach parties.

Festivals for insiders

The Festa Major (first weekend of August) is emphatically not aimed at tourists. Saturday night involves a mobile disco in the square, unlimited cans of Estrella at €1.50, and sardanes danced by seven-year-olds and septuagenarians in strict formation. At midnight the mayor hands out slices of coca (sweet flatbread) to everyone present; if you’re still standing at 2 am someone’s uncle will press a plastic cup of orujo on you. Accommodation is impossible unless you booked in February, and the music stops only when the police remind the DJ of the 4 am curfew.

Smaller, more approachable is the grape harvest supper in mid-September: one long table under plane trees, grilled botifarra, alioli and a bottom-up jug of young garnatxa for €12. Bring your own plate; nobody checks tickets, they just count heads.

When to come – and when not to

Mid-May to late June is the sweet spot: wheat turns gold, temperatures hover around 24 °C, and the mosquitoes have not yet hatched. September works too, though farmers burn stubble and the sky can smell faintly of smoke. July and August are furnace-hot; the plain acts like a griddle and shade is scarce. Winter is quiet, occasionally luminous, but many country pensions close and the Tramuntana wind can whip across the fields at 80 km/h.

Rain, when it arrives, is brief and torrential; within an hour the lanes become sticky clay that clogs bike tyres. Check the forecast before you set out – drainage ditches fill fast and the only shelter is the church porch.

Practicalities without the brochure speak

Drive: Girona airport to El Far is 40 min on the C-66, toll-free.
Train: London to Girona via Paris-Barcelona in under 11 h; pick up a hire car at the station.
Cash: no ATM in the village; the nearest is at the Repsol garage on the N-II, 7 km towards France.
Language: Catalan first, Spanish second, halting English in the restaurants only when they sense panic.
Shops: bakery van visits Tuesday and Friday at 10 am; otherwise stock up in Figueres.

El Far d’Empordà will never make anyone’s bucket list, and that is precisely its appeal. Come for the sound of the bell instead of the crash of surf, for the smell of straw rather than suntan lotion, and for the minor revelation that rural Catalonia still belongs to the people who farm it, not the people who photograph it.