Vilobí d'Onyar

The 06:00 Ryanair queue at Girona-Costa Brava is still snaking towards security when the first breakfast coffees are poured in Vilobí d’Onyar, ten minutes up the road.
Most passengers never leave the hotel strip, but if you do, you’ll find a working Catalan village where the plane-spotters’ terrace is the church bell-tower and the river Onyar slips past vegetable plots and 19th-century stone granaries before anyone has thought about lunch.

Runway Views and Riverside Plots

Vilobí is flat, spread out and resolutely practical.
The airport fence almost touches the industrial estate, yet turn the other way and you’re immediately among small allotments, pollarded plane trees and the low, green smells of a slow-moving river.
Altitude is a modest 122 m, so the air is softer than Girona’s sometimes brisk wind-tunnel, and the climate behaves more like inland Empordà than the coast: hotter in July, nippier in January, with mist that lingers in the Onyar valley until the sun burns through.

There is no medieval hill-top drama here.
The oldest houses line Carrer Major in a short, confident row: stone doorways with 1773 carved in the lintel, wrought-iron balconies painted the colour of dried blood, geraniums that survive because someone remembers to water them.
The parish church of Sant Feliu keeps watch from a modest rise; its bell rings at odd intervals, partly to tell the time, partly to remind the village it still exists.

Where the Plane Noise Becomes Background

Proximity to the airport shaped the twentieth-century story.
Small textile workshops arrived in the 1950s, followed by logistics depots and, finally, the three-star Hotel Vilobí whose car park is full of British number plates left for a fortnight.
Far from spoiling the place, the airport provides year-round employment; without it Vilobí would be another half-empty dormitory town.
Noise?
Yes, you’ll hear a Boeing 737 climbing out at 07:10, but the locals barely notice.
They’ll be more interested in whether yesterday’s rain has swollen the river enough to bring the first frogs into the reed beds.

Walk south along the unpaved camí de la Riera and the traffic thins to tractors and the occasional dog walker.
Kingfishers flash turquoise if you keep your eyes on the far bank; cormorants sit on half-submerged tree trunks, wings held out like black washing.
The path stops at a ford that becomes impassable after heavy rain – the only real hazard is muddy trainers and the indignant look of a farmer who thinks you’ve strayed too close to his tomatoes.

A Menu That Doesn’t Need Translating

British visitors who venture beyond the hotel buffet usually end up in the bar of the Fonda Mitjà, a family guesthouse that predates low-cost airlines by a century.
Thursday lunchtime is arroç a la cassola, a sticky, saffron-heavy rice with pork ribs and local beans; if you ask, they’ll bring you the metal pan it was cooked in so you can scrape off the socarrat, the caramelised bottom layer that tastes of wood smoke and patience.
A three-course menú del dia costs €14 and includes wine poured from a plastic litre bottle – no-one here sees the point of pretension.

Evenings are quiet.
By 22:00 the main square is given over to teenagers on scooters and the last tables of grandparents playing cards.
If you want nightlife, Girona is a twenty-minute taxi (fixed airport tariff €28), but most Brits simply stock up at the Supercor in the polygone industrial and retreat to their balconies to watch the runway lights blink like low stars.

Walks, Wheels and What You’re Missing

The village makes a handy springboard rather than a destination.
A 25-minute drive north-east and you’re among the volcanic forests of La Fageda; half an hour south-west reaches the cork-oak covered Gavarres where mountain-bike trails weave between abandoned farmhouses.
Road cyclists appreciate the dead-flat lanes towards Anglès: warm up here before attacking the Rocacorba climb whose summit appears regularly in Strava nightmares.

Back in Vilobí, pick up the signed 6 km loop known as the Camí de les Ànimes.
It starts behind the cemetery, follows the river, then cuts through almond and olive groves to a tiny Romanesque chapel whose door is locked but whose shade is obliging.
Spring blossom is early – mid-February some years – while October brings the smell of crushed olives and the distant rattle of a mechanical harvester that looks like a dinosaur eating a hedge.

Fiestas Without the Tour-Group Schedule

Visit in late August and you’ll collide with the Festa Major.
Brass bands march down streets barely wider than a trumpet’s reach, correfocs spit sparks outside the bakery, and the Saturday night dance keeps the whole village awake until the first plane lands at 06:25.
January offers Sant Antoni, when bonfires are lit beside the river and horses are blessed with copious splashes of cheap cava.
Neither event is staged for visitors; if you want a plastic chair and a paper plate of botifarra, simply turn up and look willing.

The Honest Check-List

Stay:
Hotel Vilobí remains the sensible choice.
Rooms are plain but spotless, triple-glazing dulls the dawn jets, and the shuttle runs at 05:00 if you pre-book.
A week’s parking plus one night is often cheaper than the airport long-stay alone.

Don’t expect:
Cobbled alleys, souvenir shops or a tourist office.
The castle ruins you see on Google Earth are on private farmland with no right of way.
If you climb the gate, expect a polite but firm Catalan farmer to escort you back.

Do bring:
Walking shoes for muddy tracks; a Spanish phrasebook – English is spoken at the hotel reception but not necessarily in the bakery.
An evening plan: after 21:30 the only illuminated windows belong to the petrol station and the pharmacy.

Weather reality:
Summer nights stay warm (20 °C) but winters can dip to 3 °C and the tramontana wind whistles down the valley.
Fog occasionally closes the airport; when it does, the village wakes to the rare sound of silence.

Vilobí d’Onyar will never fill a glossy brochure.
It is a place for travellers who prefer their Spain without theme-park varnish, where the bread is baked at 05:00, the river keeps its own slow timetable, and the easiest way to say goodbye is a ten-minute shuttle to check-in.
Use it as a soft landing, a last night’s cheap dinner, or – if you linger – a reminder that Catalonia still has corners where life is governed by bell-towers and tomato harvests, not timetables and TripAdvisor.