Boimorto

The cows normally outnumber people in Boimorto, but for three August nights the ratio flips. A 15,000-capacity pop-up city sprouts in the council’s largest meadow, generators throb where hay bales sat the week before, and the village bar – one of everything here – learns to pour San Miguel faster than the London Underground at 6 p.m. on a Friday. The rest of the year the place reverts to its factory setting: green, quiet, scattered.

Fields before fences

Boimorto sits 30 km inland from A Coruña, stitched together by minor roads that drivers treat like motorways and tractors treat like driveways. There is no centro histórico to tick off, just a string of hamlets – Ferreiros, Rendal, Brates – separated by cow pasture and oak scrub. Stone houses with heraldic shields appear suddenly round a bend, then disappear behind a barn. The only thing that looks planned is the church square in Ferreiros, where the 18th-century Santa María still gathers the parish for 11 o’clock mass and the subsequent gossip. Come early enough and you’ll see neighbours swapping seed potatoes while the priest locks up; stay late and you’ll hear the bells strike quarters long after mobile reception has given up.

Walking is the sensible way to join the dots. A four-kilometre loop from the church past Casanova farm takes in hórreos on stilts, a working bread oven and enough cruceiros – wayside stone crosses – to confirm you’re definitely in Galicia. The gradients are gentle, more Cambridge than Snowdonia, but the clay tracks stick like wet biscuit if it has rained. Decent tread and a plastic bag for the car mats are worth their weight in euros.

Music and money

The Festival de la Luz is why Brits who’ve heard of Boimorto have heard of it. End of August, free camping, headline Spanish indie acts and every euro of profit funnelled to a children’s-cancer charity. Glastonbury comparisons are inevitable – mostly because the beer is cheap and the loos surprisingly bearable. The council loans the main field, farmers rent their gateways as car parks, and the village school becomes a left-luggage office. For 72 hours the local population swells from 2,000 to festival city, then deflates like a bouncy castle on Monday morning. If you’re after rural authenticity, arrive earlier in the month; if you want to see Galicians dancing in wellies to Vetusta Morla, this is your moment.

Practical note: the stage is 3 km from the village proper. There is no shuttle, and the last bus back to Santiago leaves at 21:30 – before the headliners even sound-check. Pack a torch, or resign yourself to a starlit stumble accompanied by other campers humming lost choruses.

Eating what the road produces

Meals here obey distance, not menus. Arzúa, 15 minutes east, is the regional dairy capital; its tetilla cheese appears at every Boimorto fiesta, sliced so thick it bends the paper plate. In winter, caldo gallego – white-bean broth with greens and a pig’s worth of chorizo – steams the bar windows until the paint peels. Summer brings peppers smaller than a fifty-pence piece, grilled whole and salted like bar snacks that bite back. Prices stay agricultural: a three-course menú del día with wine rarely breaks €12, and if you ask for tap water nobody flinches. Vegetarians survive on tortilla and sympathy; vegans should probably fill up in Santiago first.

Mud, maps and manners

The council website lists no heritage opening hours because nothing is kept shut. That does not mean you can wander anywhere. Most hórreos stand in someone’s garden; close the gate, keep the dog on its lead and don’t climb stone walls for a better photo – they’re held together by moss and optimism. Parking half on the verge is fine, unless the verge is also the tractor lane to milking. If the farmer waves you backwards, reverse first and argue about Highway Code later.

Rain changes the rules completely. What looks like a firm farm track can swallow an axle, and Google’s pale-grey arteries are really just suggestions. Download an offline map and trust the tarmac: the N-547 skirts the south, and every hamlet touches it eventually. Mobile data drops in every valley; if you need to call a taxi, do it while you can still see the mast.

Seasons without sales pitch

Spring brings yellow gorse fires across the hills and enough daylight to walk after supper. Temperatures sit in the mid-teens, perfect for a light jumper and the first outdoor coffee of the year. Autumn reverses the colours: chestnut browns, oak golds and morning mist that makes the CCTV cameras on barns look romantic. Both seasons suit cyclists who prefer fondo to mountains – short ramps, rolling recovery, more cows than cars.

Summer is warm but rarely fierce; locals still shut the blinds at 14:00 and reopen them at 17:00, a routine that keeps stone houses cooler than air-conditioning. Winter is damp rather than cold – think Dartmoor without the wind. Daylight shrinks to eight hours, every bar has a log burner, and the festival field returns to grazing. Access stays easy; snow is front-page news here.

Beds, bolts and backup

Outside festival weekend Boimorto contains zero hotels. The nearest roof-tiles are in Arzúa: Pazo de Santa María, a converted manor house with prices from €55, or Hostal Mesón de Arzúa above the bus stop, where €35 buys a spotless room and coffee downstairs at six. Melide, 20 km south, adds boutique options if you must have slippers. Otherwise it’s camping in the municipal field beside the football pitch – cold showers, no charge, and the caretaker collects rubbish every morning whether you’re awake or not.

Cash matters. The village ATM is a single Cajamar machine outside the only supermarket; it empties on Saturday and isn’t refilled until Tuesday. Cards work in the bakery, nowhere else. Top up in Santiago airport while you’re still optimistic.

Worth the detour?

Boimorto will never compete with Santiago’s cathedral or the Rías Baixas beaches. It offers instead a calibration exercise: how slowly can you travel before the cows start to recognise you? Walk one hamlet, drink one coffee, buy cheese still warm from the dairy, and you’ve seen the place work. Stay for the festival if you fancy Spanish lyrics under fairy lights, but come back in November when the stage is gone and the only soundtrack is a tractor reversing into a barn. That’s when you realise the fields weren’t empty – they were just waiting for the music to finish.