Móra la Nova

The 09:03 from Barcelona still draws breath beside the level crossing, and for two minutes the station platform smells of brake-dust and orange peel. Then the doors wheeze shut, the rails click back to silence, and you realise the loudest thing left in Mora la Nova is the river. Thirty-one metres above sea level and barely two streets deep, the town sits low enough for the Ebro to nudge its garden walls whenever the dam up-stream releases a winter pulse. Locals measure the year by the river’s timetable, not the railway’s.

A Town That Faces the Water

Every river community has a compass of its own. Here the parish church of Sant Joan Baptista points squarely at the water, its rebuilt bell-tower a handy bearing for walkers who lose the thread of the carrer Major. The houses are boxy, stucco the colour of wet sand, and their ground floors still open onto the street with the original iron bars that once secured wine casks. Nothing is picture-postcard enough to make you reach for a camera; instead the appeal is the unvarnished continuity of a place that has handled olives, peaches and freight wagons in the same unhurried rhythm since the track arrived in 1891.

Cross the road from the station and you are already on the riverbank path. Swallows stitch the air above the reeds, and a hand-painted board lists birds you are likely to see before you reach the first bench: night heron, kingfisher, cormorant that dries its wings like a black washing line. The Camí Natural de l’Ebre is tarmacked for the first three kilometres, flat enough for a hybrid bike and mercifully shaded by poplars. After that the surface crumbles into packed grit, and the kilometre posts start to feel further apart. Carry water; the only bar between here and Miravet opens when its owner feels like it.

What You Do When the Train Has Gone

Mora la Nova makes a virtue of being a staging post. Hire a bicycle at the tiny rental hatch in the station yard (€18 a day, helmet thrown in) and you can freewolf-ride the Via Verde, a reclaimed railway that runs 23 km north to Tortosa through tunnels echoing with dripping water and the smell of fennel. Southbound the same trail delivers you to Miravet in under an hour, the river crossing done by a green-and-white ferry that the ferryman hauls on a wire rope. If you prefer your transport motorised, the regional train continues twice daily to Tortosa; from there a local bus climbs to the hill-town of Gandesa and the Civil War trenches of the Ebro battlefield. Tickets are cheap enough to treat the journey like a hop-on bus tour, except the commentary comes from octogenarians in the next seat who remember when the line carried troops, not tourists.

Back in the village, the Museu de l’Ebre occupies a former wine cooperative built in 1920. Inside you will find a wooden punt that once carried almonds to market, a wall of black-and-white photographs of river floods, and a glass tank holding a live carp the size of a house brick. Entry is free; the curator follows you round, switching lights on and off with the satisfaction of someone who rarely sees a foreign visitor. Ask about the water-level gauge on the outside wall: the highest mark, from October 2019, sits a metre above your head.

Eating by the Clock of the Orchards

British travellers sometimes complain that inland Catalonia eats late. In Mora la Nova the timetable is dictated by the pickers’ shift, not metropolitan fashion. At 13:00 the shutters of Bar Central clatter up; by 15:30 they are down again. The menu del dia runs to three courses, wine and coffee for €14, and the fish course is whatever came upriver that morning—zander in winter, eel in spring, a thick slab of battered hake when the freezer truck from Tarragona has been. Order the calçots in season (Feb-April) only if you are prepared to smell of smoke for the rest of the afternoon; the cook will bring a bundle of charred onions and a bib that makes you look like a dental patient. Pudding is usually crema catalana, chilled to cracking point and singed with sugar while you wait.

Outside mealtimes you buy fruit from the porch of the Cooperativa Agrícola, a no-nonsense warehouse that weighs your peaches and charges by the kilo. The season starts with cherries in late May and ends with persimmons in December; between times the counters overflow with nectarines whose scent drifts across the car park and makes the diesel fumes almost pleasant.

When the River Throws a Party

The town’s main fiesta, Sant Bartomeu, lands on the last weekend of August. Temperatures flirt with 38 °C, and sensible visitors escape to the embalse de Riba-roja where the water is five degrees cooler and the only shade is what you bring on your hired kayak. Return at dusk and the streets are strung with coloured bulbs, the plaza smells of frying onion, and a brass band plays pasodobles with the mechanical enthusiasm of a seaside organ. If you prefer your entertainment quieter, come in mid-September for the Festa de la Verema, when the first must is poured and the local vermouth flows from an enamel dispenser in the square. Brits who have tasted only the supermarket version are startled by the freshness—more cinnamon than medicine, served over ice with a sliver of green olive.

The Practical Bit, Without the Bullet Points

Mora la Nova has two small hotels, both on the river side of the track. The three-star Hotel Nou has rooms for €70 including breakfast (strong coffee, ensaïmada pastry, fruit that tastes of actual soil). Book ahead in April and October when bird-watchers reserve months early. There is no pool; instead you walk fifty metres and jump off the concrete jetty where local kids practise bombs. The water is murky after rain, crystal after a dry week, and the current slack enough for a lazy swim upstream, float back routine.

Trains run roughly every two hours from Barcelona Sants, take 2 h 21 min and cost between €12 and €18 depending on how far ahead you book. From Tarragona it is 65 minutes by car on the C-12, a road that follows the river and delivers you to town before you have finished the first podcast. Bring cash: the single ATM beside the town hall closes at 14:00 and runs out of notes at weekends. Evening entertainment is a beer on the river wall and watching the swifts dive between the street lights; if that sounds too quiet, stay in Tortosa and visit on a day-return ticket.

Leave before the 07:42 southbound if you want to be in Tarragona for coffee, or linger until the 20:03 and watch the sky turn the colour of dried blood over the water. Either way, Mora la Nova will have reset its rhythm to the river by the time your train rounds the bend, the platform empty again except for the smell of oranges and the faint hiss of brakes cooling in the dark.