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about A Merca
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The tractor always wins. On A Merca's winding lanes, where stone walls squeeze the tarmac to single-track width, farm vehicles have right of way by sheer weight and patience. Visitors in hire cars learn quickly: reverse to the nearest passing place, switch off the engine, and listen to the silence that rushes back in. At 650 metres above sea level, in the foothills between Ourense and the Portuguese border, the air carries both the chill of altitude and the warmth of slow time.
This is not a village that announces itself. A Merca spreads across rolling hills in a scatter of hamlets—Santiago, A Igrexa, O Couto—each barely a dozen houses strong. Granite hórreos on stone stilts stand beside modern garages; cruceiros, those characteristic Galician stone crosses, mark road junctions where GPS signals flicker and die. The parish church of Santiago rises above the main nucleus, its baroque tower visible from kilometres away, but there is no plaza mayor, no café terrace with views. Instead, life happens in the gaps: a vegetable patch behind a crumbling wall, a bread oven built into the side of somebody's house, the cemetery where generations share the same family names carved into identical grey stone.
Walking reveals the place better than any map. A network of old paths links the hamlets, contouring around hills planted with oak and chestnut. Waymarking is minimal—occasional yellow arrows painted on fenceposts—but the routes are obvious once you spot the worn grooves where generations have walked to mill, to church, to market. Spring brings wild daffodils to the verges; autumn turns the chestnut woods copper and fills the paths with spiny green cases that crack underfoot. After rain, the granite bedrock turns slick as ice. Proper walking boots aren't affectation here; they're what stop you landing on your backside in front of the local who warned you the path was "un poco resbaladizo".
The altitude changes everything. While the Rías Baixas coast basks in midwinter sunshine, A Merca can be wrapped in mist that reduces visibility to the next stone wall. Summers are cooler than the valley below—welcome when Ourense city is hitting 38°C—but evenings require a jumper even in August. Winter brings proper frost; the roads up from the A-52 motorway get gritted, but side tracks can stay white for days. Come prepared, or stay in the valley.
Food follows the same altitude-adjusted logic. This is country for hearty fare: lacón con grelos, pork shoulder simmered with turnip tops, appears on Thursdays at Bar O Cruceiro, the only bar in the village centre. Empanadas—savoury pies stuffed with tuna or cockles—come by the quarter-metre, wrapped in paper to take on walks. The local pigs, Celtic breeds that roam the oak woods, produce ham that hangs from ceiling beams in front rooms turned into informal shops. No tasting menus, no wine pairings. Just slices cut to order while the owner watches the lunchtime news.
The dispersed layout catches drivers out. What looks like a five-minute hop on the map involves narrow lanes that twist between stone walls, past farmyards where dogs sleep in the middle of the road. Distances double, triple. Better to park at the church and walk. From Santiago, a forty-minute loop heads south to the abandoned hamlet of A Igrexa Vella, its chapel roof long gone but walls still standing against the wind. Another path strikes west to the Romanesque bridge at Ponte Taboada, single-arched and barely wide enough for a modern car, where the river pools deep enough for summer swimming if you don't mind the temperature.
Nearby Celanova offers the region's headline sight—the tenth-century monastery of San Rosendo, all pink stone and carved capitals—but A Merca works better as antidote than destination. Base yourself here, walk the lanes until boots are muddy, then drive the half-hour to As Conchas reservoir for a different scale of landscape. The water stretches fifteen kilometres along the Miño valley, its banks dotted with riverside restaurants serving river lampreys in season. Order the lamprey stew if you're feeling adventurous; tastes like nothing else, and that's not necessarily a recommendation.
Accommodation remains resolutely low-key. Casa Rural O Castelo, ten minutes drive towards Celanova, offers four rooms in a converted stone house with underfloor heating and views across the valley. Owners Susana and Manolo keep chickens, grow vegetables, and will lend you a map hand-drawn on the back of an envelope. Breakfast includes eggs from said chickens and honey from hives you can see across the lane. Alternative options cluster in Allariz, twenty minutes north—a medieval town with proper restaurants and a riverside park—but staying there misses the point. A Merca's appeal lies in the early morning light on granite walls, the sound of someone chopping wood, the smell of pine smoke drifting across the lane.
Weather dictates everything. Blue-sky days reveal the full sweep of hills fading towards Portugal; mist transforms the same landscape into something softer, more secretive. Photographers prefer the drama of storms building over the valley, but those same storms make driving back to the main road an exercise in concentration. Check the forecast before setting out, and carry waterproofs regardless. Galician weather doesn't do half measures.
The village makes no concessions to tourism, and that's precisely its strength. No gift shops sell tea towels with cruceiro motifs; nobody offers guided walks to the best hórreo. What you get instead is access to ordinary life lived in extraordinary surroundings. Sit on the church steps long enough and someone will stop to pass the time of day—in Galician first, Spanish second, English not at all. Respond with the courtesy of attempting either language and doors open, literally. An invitation to see the inside of a hórreo might follow, or directions to a waterfall that doesn't appear on any map.
Leave the checklist mentality at home. A Merca rewards those who abandon the hunt for the perfect photo and instead notice how stone walls shift colour through the day, how chestnut leaves sound when wind moves through them, how the village goes quiet at siesta time save for dogs barking and tractors returning from distant fields. Three days here stretches longer than a week on the coast. The tractor will still make you reverse, but by then you'll be waving thanks instead of cursing the narrow road.
