Foz

The tide chart is pinned above the bar at Casa Sindo, right next to the €2.20 breakfast menu. In Foz, that scrap of paper matters more than any glossy brochure. When the water retreats, the scallop-shell curve of A Rapadoira doubles in width, exposing mirror-flat sand that locals rake for cockles before the first coffee. When it returns, the same beach shrinks to a narrow strip and the promenade fills with parents pushing buggies into the salt wind, chatting in Galician rather than the Castilian Spanish most visitors half-remember from school.

Foz sits halfway along A Mariña Central, the lesser-known middle child between Ribadeo’s Instagram-famous Cathedrals beach and the glassy rias of Viveiro. Five thousand people live here year-round, mending nets in the small port, arguing over football in the concrete plaza, sending their children to the school behind the 1970s church. The village works because it has never quite decided whether it is a fishing town that lets tourists sleep here or a beach resort that still fishes. The result is a place where you can buy a kilo of just-landed langoustines for £14 and carry them past a surf shop renting 5 mm wetsuits “because the Atlantic is still only 17 °C in August”.

Beach Logic

A Rapadoira is the obvious first stop: five minutes on foot from most accommodation, edged by a low sea wall and a row of cafés whose plastic chairs scrape across the pavement at sunset. The sand is clean, the lifeguards are bilingual, and on weekday mornings in June you can walk the full kilometre meeting more dogs than people. Come midday in August the same stretch fills with extended Spanish families, volleyball nets and portable speakers. The trick is to treat it like the locals do: early dip, long lunch, return at six when the sun is lower and the heat has burnt off.

If the north wind is up, drive four kilometres west to Arealonga, a pocket-handkerchief signposted turn-off just before the Masma estuary. Here the dunes are higher, the beach curves for three kilometres and there is nothing except a seasonal kiosk selling cans of Estrella at €2. Tides are huge—almost five metres at springs—so check the chart or you may find yourself carrying your towel above your head to avoid an impromptu paddle back to the car park.

What the Hills Remember

Behind the seafront the land rises fast. Eucalyptus plantations scent the air with cough-drop sharpness and the roads narrow to single track bordered by cow parsley. Halfway up the hill, invisible unless you know to look, sits the pre-Romanesque church of San Martiño de Mondoñedo. It is not in Mondoñedo town—another common confusion—but here in Foz parish, tucked between vegetable plots. The key hangs in the house opposite; if the elderly caretaker is out shopping you will have to return later. Inside, the stone is cool enough to raise goose-bumps even in July, the proportions so exact that modern architects arrive with notebooks. Stay ten minutes and the traffic noise from the N-634 fades entirely.

The same road continues upwards to a col at 320 m where, suddenly, the coast appears as a thin silver blade. On clear days you can pick out the white houses of Ribadeo; more often a layer of Atlantic mist softens everything into watercolour. This is only a 15-minute drive from the harbour, yet the temperature can drop five degrees. Bring a mac—Galicia’s weather apps are accurate for approximately forty-five minutes ahead.

Eating Without a Phrasebook

English is thin on the ground, but menus are written in shorthand you can decode: “zamburiñas” are mini-scallops baked with butter and breadcrumbs, mild enough for the most cautious palate; “churrasco” is thin pork shoulder flash-grilled and served with edible chips rather than the Spanish habit of leaving them half-raw. Pulpo arrives on a wooden board, paprika-stained and unexpectedly tender; the trick is to stop looking at the suckers. House Albariño costs €2.80 a glass and tastes like cool grapefruit—order it by pointing at the tap, nobody minds.

Sunday lunchtime everything shuts except the bars. The local routine is raciones at two, siesta at four, beach again at six. Try to book a restaurant table after 3.30 pm and you will be met with polite disbelief. Cash matters: many tills refuse cards under €10 and the only ATM in the old town empties on Saturday night. Withdraw before the Brits-at-the-seafront queue forms.

Getting Stuck, Getting Moving

A car is almost essential. The bus from Lugo runs four times daily, but the stop is on the ring road and the best coves are down unsigned dirt tracks where hire-company insurance quivers. Fly into A Coruña—an hour and a quarter on the A-8—or Santiago, slightly farther but with more UK summer routes. Hire prices drop sharply if you pick up downtown rather than airside; the drive north is motorway almost to the village sign.

Once here, park once and walk. The seafront paseo is level and stretches three kilometres from the marina to the Masma footbridge, perfect for prams or post-rice strolls. Cyclists can follow a disused railway south-east for 12 km of gravelly quiet to the market gardens of Burela, returning by train if legs give out. Trains are hourly, bike carriage free, and the guard waves you aboard with the relaxed authority of a man who has never heard of peak-time chaos.

When the Party Starts—and Stops

Fiestas are maritime. On 16 July the Virgen del Carmen is carried from church to fishing boat, bouquet lashed to the bow, escorted by horns and a cloud of diesel. Fireworks follow, then more octopus. August brings a low-key folk festival in the plaza; you will hear bagpipes rather than reggaeton, a reminder that Celtic culture did not stop at the English Channel. By midnight the streets are quiet—this is not Sanxenxo or Ibiza. If you want clubbing you are, frankly, on the wrong coast.

The upside is September: sea still warm, hotels 30 % cheaper, restaurants happy to chat because they are not turning tables. Winter is wet and wild, beloved by surfers who emerge from neoprene at the bakery, steam rising as they queue for churros. Many hotels close 15 October–Easter; apartments stay open but check heating—Atlantic damp creeps through thick walls.

Leaving Without the T-shirt

Foz will not sell you a fridge magnet shaped like a whale. There is no souvenir tat, which is refreshing, but also no evening buzz once the sun drops behind Monte Castelo. What it does offer is a functioning coastal village where prices have not yet been inflated by stag parties, and where the same family has mended nets on the quay since 1952. Stay three nights and the barman remembers your coffee order; stay a week and the old men nod you into their bench circle, discussing tomorrow’s wind as if it were village gossip. Which, in Galicia, it is.

Pack a mac, reef-booties for sharp rocks, and enough cash for spontaneous shellfish. Check the tide chart on the bar wall. Then walk the tideline until the Atlantic sun sinks orange behind the headland, and wonder why the Costas ever seemed a good idea.