Moraña

The first thing you notice is the silence after ten o’clock. No mopeds, no thumping bar speakers, just the occasional clank of a cow bell and the far-off growl of a diesel Massey Ferguson heading home. Morana sits 280 m above sea level on a shoulder of the Monte do Bocelo ridge; nights are cool even in July, and morning mist can hide the valley until the sun burns through at half nine. That altitude keeps the Atlantic damp at bay—no moss-coated granite like on the coast—yet it also means that when Galicia’s weather turns, the roads clog with mud thick enough to steal your wellies.

Parish, not postcard

Administratively Morana is a municipality of 5,000 souls; geographically it is a scatter of hamlets linked by lanes too narrow for two white vans to pass without one reversing 200 m. Forget the textbook Spanish plaza mayor. Each parish—Santa María, San Vicente, San Xurxo—has its own stone church, cemetery and drinking fountain; the “centre” is wherever you happen to park. The upside is zero tour coaches. The downside is that sights are measured in footsteps, not metres. The medieval cruceiro at A Granxa stands five minutes down a farm track that turns to axle-deep slurry after rain; wear the scruffy trainers and no one bats an eyelid.

What you’ll actually look at

Start with the parish church of Santa María de Morana. It isn’t cathedral-sized, but the Romanesque doorway is still carved with the same workshop grooves master masons cut 800 years ago. Inside, the timber roof smells of beeswax and burnt dust from last Sunday’s candles; outside, the cemetery’s iron crosses lean like tired soldiers. Walk fifty paces downhill and you reach a stone-walled horreo on stilts—still used to store last year’s walnuts, padlock included. Follow the lane east for ten minutes and you’ll find the Fuente de San Roque: water cold enough to make a British tap seem tropical, and locals fill five-litre jerrycans here because it tastes better than the mains.

Further afield the landscape opens into smallholdings edged by chestnut rail fences. Buzzards wheel overhead; red admiral butterflies sun themselves on cowpats. There is no entrance fee, no QR code, no gift shop fridge magnet. The experience is cumulative rather than spectacular: one crumbling pazo gateway smothered in wisteria, a forgotten millstone half submerged in ferns, the way a farmer raises two fingers off the steering wheel in passing—rural Galicia distilled.

Moving without a motor

The best map is the 1:25,000 Xunta series “Monte do Bocelo”; it marks rights of way that Google still hasn’t noticed. A gentle circuit leaves the cemetery, joins a stone-paved corredoira, climbs through eucalyptus and young pine, then drops back along the regato where women once beat linen on flat rocks. Total distance: 5 km; total climb: 120 m. In April the verges are a paintbox of blue squill and white cuckoo-flower; in October chestnut husks crack underfoot and wild boar diggings appear overnight. After prolonged rain the clay sections resemble a Glastonbury Sunday—stick to the grassy crown and accept that socks will never be the same.

If you want a proper summit, drive 15 minutes to the track head at O Chan do Medo. From there it’s 45 minutes on a stony path to the radar domes on Bocelo’s 600 m top. The reward is a 40-km panorama: the Ría de Arousa glinting like hammered pewter, the alps of O Caurel floating purple on the horizon, and half a dozen stone villages folded into folds of green that feel more Lake District than Costas.

Eating without showboating

Morana’s three café-bars open at seven for coffee and anis, serve lunch from 13:30-15:30, then pull the shutters until 20:00. There is no tasting menu, no foam, no sourdough. Order the menú del día—usually €12—and you’ll get soup thick with cabbage and chorizo, followed by churrasco pork ribs blackened on the grill and a slab of tarta de Santiago heavy with almond and lemon zest. Vegetarians can cobble together a meal of pimientos de Padrón and tortilla, but this is carnivore country; even the green beans arrive garnished with lacón. Saturday brings a produce market to Praza do Concello: plastic bowls of honey, rubbery queixo do país wrapped in cabbage leaves, bunches of turnip tops still beaded with dew. Bring cash—no card machine, no gimmicky mark-up, and the cheese keeps for three days in a camper-van fridge.

When the clouds roll in

Galicia’s weather is a bookie’s nightmare. You can leave Santiago under sapphire skies and find Morana wrapped in hill fog thicker than clotted cream. The village doesn’t shut, but colours mute and vistas disappear. Locals treat mist as a standard season: they light the wood-burner, pull on a wax jacket and carry on. Visitors tend to panic. Don’t. Visibility of 30 m turns every cow track into an audio drama—cuckoos, distant chainsaws, the soft thud of apples falling in an orchard you cannot see. Just carry a waterproof with taped seams; cheap ponchos shred on gorse.

Getting there, staying there

Fly to Santiago from Stansted year-round, or from Heathrow and Manchester between April and October. Pre-book a hire car—public buses terminate at A Estrada, 12 km short, and a taxi from the airport costs €90 if you ring Radio Taxi in advance. The final approach is on the PO-201, a road so empty that pheasants stare at your headlights. Petrol is cheaper at the A Estrada Repsol than on the airport ring road; fill up before you return or the rental company will charge an eye-watering refuelling premium.

Accommodation is thin. O Curralino is a converted stone barn for two (€90 a night, three-night minimum) with under-floor heating and views across a chestnut wood. Hostal O Castro in neighbouring A Estrada offers plain doubles for €55, but you’ll need wheels. Camper vans are tolerated in the sports-ground car park—ask at the ayuntamiento for a free permit and empty grey water responsibly. There is no bank, no pharmacy at weekends, and the small Gadis supermarket locks its doors from 14:00-17:00. Shop before lunch or survive on bread, tinned sardines and the Albariño you meant to save for home.

The catch

Morana will disappoint anyone chasing Instagram perfection. Stone walls bulge, barn roofs sag, and satellite dishes bloom like metal fungi. English is rarely spoken—learn “bos días” and “graciñas” and you’ll halve the price of cheese. Mobile coverage on EE is patchy; Vodafone works if you stand in the church atrium and face north. Nightlife finishes before the BBC Ten O’Clock News. Come expecting rural normality, not a curated open-air museum, and the place makes immediate sense.

Drive away on the AP-53 and the hills swallow the village in minutes. Nothing dramatic happened, no bucket-list box got ticked. Yet for a couple of days your pulse slowed to tractor rhythm, your boots smelled of manure and wild garlic, and you remembered what quiet actually sounds like. That, rather than a souvenir tea towel, is Morana’s real export—and it travels home better than any bottle of duty-free gin.