Fornells de la Selva

The diesel locomotive parked beside the bakery is the first clue that Fornells de la Selva isn’t quite the timeless stone hamlet the brochure might promise. Children clamber over its 1960s-green bonnet while parents photograph the Girona skyline shimmering ten kilometres north. This is a commuter village that happened to keep its tractors, a place where Ryanair passengers bed down for six hours and wake to rooster song.

At barely 100 m above sea level, the settlement spreads across a shallow plateau of red earth and wheat. There is no dramatic gorge, no fortified crest, just a grid of quiet lanes stitched between vegetable plots and low oak scrub. The church bell, not the tide, marks the hours. Locals call the terrain la plana: the plain. It feels roomy after Girona’s tight medieval alleys, and the afternoon wind combs the fields with a smell of fennel and diesel.

A train line, a bakery, and a locked church

The old station building still says “Fornells” in 1950s tile, though only regional trains pause here now. Eight minutes north is Girona; eighty south is Barcelona. British visitors usually arrive the other way: a £29 Tuesday flight to Girona-Costa Brava, then a €25 cab ride through warehouse suburbs that smell of pine and hot tarmac. The driver will confirm you haven’t confused the village with its Menorcan namesake. You haven’t; the sea is 35 km east and you’ll smell it only when the tramontana wind swings round.

Within the village perimeter, sights are counted on one hand. The parish church of Sant Julià keeps its doors bolted except for Sunday mass at 11 a.m.; the best photograph is taken from the cycle path behind, where the apse rises above kitchen gardens of leek and artichoke. A single bronze plaque explains that the building began in medieval times, was rebuilt in 1789, then again after a roof fire in 1936. The interior is plain stone and dark varnish, nothing Gaudí, nothing to queue for.

Opposite the church, the bakery opens at 6 a.m. and sells custard-filled bunyols that taste of nutmeg and lemon zest. By 11 a.m. the tray is empty and the owner pulls down the shutter: this is also the village timetable in miniature. If you arrive after dusk expecting tapas, you will find only the yellow glow of the Repsol garage and a vending machine that dispenses stale sandwiches.

Paths, pedals, and the smell of wet straw

Fornells survives on agriculture and airport spill-over; it does not survive on hikers, yet footpaths radiate in three directions. The simplest leaves from the playground, skirts the cricket ground, then dives between wheat fields towards the oak grove of La Selva. The loop takes forty minutes, just long enough to notice that the soil is terracotta, the wind turbines on the horizon are French, and every second gate bears a bilingual sign warning hunters not to shoot the hikers. Autumn brings mushrooms; spring brings poppies; July brings dust and the hum of irrigation sprinklers.

Cyclists have the better bargain. The converted railway known as the Ruta del Ferrocarril cuts a dead-straight, car-free line from Girona to Sant Feliu de Guíxols, and it passes straight through Fornells. Hire a bike at Girona’s Plaça Catalunya (€18 a day), pedal south for 25 minutes, and stop here for a sandwich. The gradient is imperceptible, the surface smooth tarmac, the shade intermittent: perfect for families whose youngest member still wobbles.

Lunch at motorway prices, minus the motorway

There are two proper restaurants. Ca la Maca occupies a pebble-dash house beside the level crossing; its €14 menú del día appears at noon sharp and finishes when the casserole runs out. Expect roast chicken, chips you can swap for salad, and a carafe of thin red wine that tastes better if you add ice. The proprietor speaks enough English to explain that civet de conill is rabbit stew and, no, it still has bones. Next door, the Centre Social functions as both working-men’s bar and village hall. Toasted sandwiches cost €3.50, a draught Estrella €2.20, and the television shows Fútbol with the volume turned politely low. Both places close by 4 p.m.; dinner service is not a concept here.

Sunday is trickier. The bakery opens 9–11 a.m. then metal grilles clatter down across every façade. Fill the rucksack on Saturday evening or face a 3 km hike to the nearest supermarket on the industrial estate. Vegetarians should note that the garage shop stocks hummus, but only the chocolate-flavoured variety aimed at truckers.

When to come, and when to leave

April and late-September give you 23 °C afternoons, wild-flowers, and airline fares below £40 return from Manchester. In July the thermometer scrapes 36 °C, the wheat is harvested before dawn, and the village smells of warm engine oil. August is dead: locals flee to the coast, the bakery shuts for three weeks, and the sole taxi driver schedules his holiday. Winter brings a different emptiness—mist pools in the fields, the cycle path is slick with leaves, and trains run hourly rather than every thirty minutes. Still, a crisp January morning can be luminous: Pyrenees white on the horizon, church bells echoing across frosted soil, and your breath the only cloud in sight.

Stay longer than one night only if you crave silence at 2 a.m. and enjoy watching freight trains glide past like lit-up snakes. Otherwise treat Fornells as what it is: a serviceable bed before an early flight, a place to stretch your legs after too much Gothic quarter pavement. Book the three-room Hostal La Masia (doubles €55, cash only) opposite the football pitch; wake to cockerels and the 6.42 to Barcelona. By eight o’clock you will have seen everything twice, but the coffee is decent, the train fare back to the airport is €1.55, and the bakery’s doughnuts are still warm.