Fogars de la Selva

The morning bus from Tordera wheezes to a halt beside a stone water trough. No one gets off except you, and the driver restarts the engine before the door has properly shut. In that instant you realise Fogars de la Selva is not on the standard coastal circuit. The AP-7 motorway is close enough to hear the HGVs, yet the village faces the other way—towards silent holm-oak hills and vegetable plots scratched into the red Catalan clay.

At 45 m above sea level, Fogars is neither mountain retreat nor beach resort. It occupies the narrow buffer between the Montnegre massif and the marshy lower Tordera, a landscape of low ridges stitched together by dry-stone walls. Locals describe it as “transició”: the place where the pine and cork oak of the interior meet the last market gardens that feed the Costa Brava hotels twenty minutes away.

The Church, the Farmhouses and the Absence of Postcards

There is no tourism office, no rack of glossy leaflets. Directions are given by pointing at the church tower, the only vertical punctuation for several kilometres. Sant Martí is a workmanlike medieval parish rebuilt piecemeal since the 16th century; the bell arch is Gothic, the side chapels are 18th-century baroque, and the roof timbers smell of recent rain. Step inside during Sunday mass and you’ll hear Catalan spoken at full speed—Latin has not been used here since Franco died.

Around the building the grid of single-storey houses dissolves almost immediately into scattered masías: stone farmhouses with arched doorways big enough for carts, many still inhabited by the same families who planted the surrounding olives. They are private, so you cannot wander in, but the public paths run straight past their gates. From the lane you can smell wood smoke in winter and, in early summer, the sour whiff of chicken sheds. It is ordinary, working countryside—refreshing if you have spent the previous night in Lloret’s karaoke bars.

Walking Without a Summit

The tourist board lists three signed circular walks. None exceeds 8 km; none climbs more than 150 m. What they offer instead is a lesson in Mediterranean agriculture: carob groves, irrigated lettuces, abandoned terraces once planted with vines. The yellow-waymarked Ruta de la Riera follows the normally dry stream bed west to an ivy-covered stone bridge that carried the old royal road to Girona. In April the air is loud with nightingales; by late July the same path is a dust trench and you will share it only with the occasional mountain biker from Barcelona.

Carry water—there are no cafés once you leave the centre—and do not expect dramatic viewpoints. The pleasure is incremental: a black-eared wheatear flicking off a wire, the sudden waft of rosemary when you brush against a bank. On very clear winter days the Pyrenees glint white on the horizon, but usually the limit of vision is the forested ridge of Montseny, 35 km inland.

Eating (and Stocking Up)

Fogars’ single supermarket, Mas y Mas, opens 9 a.m.–1 p.m. and 5 p.m.–8 p.m., closed Sundays. Bread is baked on site and sells out by 11. If you arrive outside those hours, the vending machine outside the town hall dispenses tins of tuna, tubes of butifarra sausage and, oddly, Yorkshire Tea—leftover stock from the British camper-vanners who overwinter down the road.

For a sit-down meal, Can Jané on the BP-5101 serves a three-course menú del día for €14 (£12). Expect grilled chicken, chips and a bowl of escalivada (smoky aubergine and pepper). Vegetarians can request pa amb tomàquet—toasted farmhouse bread rubbed with tomato, garlic and olive oil—followed by crema catalana. Local cava is €3.50 a glass, cheaper than the imported Rioja.

Evening options are limited. Most villagers eat at 2 p.m. and regard supper as a sandwich. If you need dinner after nine, book a table at Hostal de la Plaça in neighbouring Tordera, ten minutes by taxi (about €18).

Using Fogars as a Base (and Why You Might)

Staying here only makes sense with a hire car. The village sits halfway between the sea and the Montseny Natural Park, 40 min to either. Morning on the coves of Malgrat de Mar, afternoon walking the UNESCO-listed beech forests of Montseny, is perfectly feasible. Parking at the beach costs €2.50 a day in October, rises to €18 in August—another reason to travel out of season.

Back in Fogars the accommodation is low-key. The smartest choice is Augusta Barcelona Vallés, an indistinct modern pile on the ring-road whose main clientele is travelling sales reps. Doubles hover round €75 with breakfast; walls are thin, but the Wi-Fi is fast and the pool is empty by 7 p.m. Budget travellers rent rooms in private houses—look for habitacions signs on the main street. Expect lace curtains, tiled floors and a resident grandmother who speaks no English but produces coffee strong enough to power a small scooter.

When to Come, When to Leave

Spring is the sweet spot: almond blossom in February, wild peonies along the lanes in April, temperatures in the low 20 °C by day and 10 °C at night. Autumn is equally gentle; the castanyada (roasted-chestnut festival) on 1 November turns the plaza into a smoky, sweet-scented party where children bang tin drums. Summer is hot—30 °C is normal—and the woods harbour tiger mosquitoes. Winter is mild by British standards (rarely below 5 °C) but the Tramontana wind can slice through three layers in minutes.

Fogars offers no compelling reason to linger longer than a day unless you crave silence. It is a place to sleep after the coast has worn you out, or to start a hike without the crowds that swarm the better-known Montseny trailheads. Treat it as what it is: a service village that happens to possess a couple of decent cafés, some honest footpaths and the small dignity of not trying to impress anyone. Arrive with that expectation and you will leave refreshed, possibly with a boot full of local lettuce and the phone number of the grandmother who rents rooms—details you will not find in any guidebook, because no one has written one.