Lalín

The queue outside the slaughterhouse-turned-restaurant starts at 11:30 sharp. By noon it stretches past the 1970s savings bank and the Galician equivalent of a Wilko, forty locals clutching carrier bags for the takeaway cocido. Welcome to Lalín, the market town that turned pig fat into civic pride and never bothered with postcard prettiness.

At 500 m above sea level, the air is cooler than in Santiago even in July. Mist pools in the valley of the Río Deza, then lifts to reveal a grid of practical streets built for trade, not tourism. There is no medieval core to tick off, no ochre-washed plaza for sunset selfies. Instead you get a place that functions: three butchers specialising in chorizo doble, a covered market that still weighs your greens on brass scales, and a Saturday morning traffic jam caused by tractors rather than coaches.

Cocido Country

The Feira do Cocido in February is the only date most Spaniards could pinpoint on a map. For three Sundays the town doubles in size, the polideportivo becomes a giant dining hall, and 40,000 raciones of chickpea-and-pork stew disappear before 4 p.m. Tickets go on sale in December; if you miss out, the same restaurants serve cocido all winter without the decibels. Off-season you can walk into O Lar do Xente and order a half-ración (€9) – still half a kilo of meat, cabbage and potatoes, plus the cooking broth served as soup. Locals add a splash of the house Ribeiro to aid digestion; British stomachs may prefer the lighter caldo gallego, a kale-and-potato broth that costs €3 and doubles as hand-warmers on foggy mornings.

Pork appears in every guise: lacón con grelos (boiled shoulder with turnip tops) on Mondays, spicy chourizo sandwiches at the football ground, and vacuum-packed lomo for the 3 h drive back to Madrid. Vegetarians survive on tortilla and the almond-heavy Tarta de Santiago, though even that arrives dusted with the Galician cross of St James.

What You Actually Look At

Start in the Casa da Cultura, a 1950s brick box that hosts rotating photo exhibitions and, crucially, free toilets. Opposite stands the parish church of Santa María, its neoclassical façade the closest thing Lalín has to a monument. Inside, the prized possession is a sixteenth-century processional cross that the faithful parade through the streets every 14 August behind a brass band and a statue of the Virgin wearing what looks suspiciously like a lace rain hood.

The rest of the centre takes twenty minutes: pastel apartment blocks, shoe shops that close for siesta, and Café Delfín where elderly men argue over the cost of hay while sipping cortados. Then you run out of town. That is the cue to fetch the car, because everything else is scattered across 30 parishes and a radius of 20 km.

Head 12 km south-west to the Mosteiro de Carboeiro, a tenth-century Benedictine wedge squeezed into a green gorge. The south portal is pure Romanesque Lego – tight voussoirs, stiff-leaf capitals, the lot – while the rest collapsed in the nineteenth century and was patched up with local granite. English Heritage would have a field day with the safety railings, but the setting is magnificent: oak and chestnut press in on three sides, the Río Deza gurgles past, and there is never a coach in sight. Check opening hours before you leave; the caretaker locks up for lunch regardless of how far you have driven.

Back towards town, the Museo Etnográfico Casa do Patrón occupies a 1740 manor house on the edge of the industrial estate. Sounds unpromising, yet the collection is Galicia’s answer to the Museum of English Rural Life: scythes, beehives made from cork oak, a stable fitted with a 1920s veterinary operating table. Labels are Spanish-only, but the life-size diorama of women weaving linen needs no translation. Allow an hour, more if you like smelling leather harnesses.

Tracks, Mills and Monday Misery

Lalín’s hiking trails are short, flat and designed for digestion rather than Strava glory. The Ruta do Río Asneiro follows an old mill leat for 6 km, passing five stone watermills now colonised by brambles and graffiti. After heavy rain the path turns into chocolate mousse; decent trainers suffice in summer, wellies in winter. Pick up the leaflet at the tourist office (inside the Casa da Cultura, open Tuesday-Friday) because waymarking is erratic and mobile coverage drops whenever the river bends.

Mountain bikers can loop south-east to the mirador on Monte Taraio, 4 km of gentle climb rewarded by a bench and, on clear days, a view across a patchwork of smallholdings that looks like northern Portugal with more electricity pylons. Cloud rolls in without warning; pack a windproof even in August.

Every route starts with good intentions and ends at a bar. Try A Devesa do Río, a riverside café whose terrace hangs over a duck pond. They serve Estrella Galicia on tap and will fill your water bottle for free, pilgrim or not.

Getting Stuck, Getting Fed

Public transport exists but feels theoretical. Monbus runs five daily services from Santiago (50 min, €6.50) and three from Ourense (45 min). The last bus back leaves at 19:15; miss it and you are negotiating with the only taxi in town. There is no railway; the old station became a carpet warehouse and shows no sign of reopening.

A hire car from Santiago airport (75 min by motorway) is the sane option. Petrol is cheaper than in the UK, motorways are toll-free west of Ourense, and parking discs are unknown – just don’t expect to move the car on fair days when half of Pontevedra province drives in for bargain underwear.

Accommodation is geared to business travellers, not honeymooners. Hotel Spa Norat Torre do Deza (€65 B&B) has spacious rooms, free underground parking and a pool that catches the evening sun. The spa costs extra and resembles a Travelodge with jets, but the wifi is reliable and reception will lend you an umbrella. The municipal albergue on the Camino has 18 beds for €8, shuts at 22:00 and insists on departure by 08:30 – fine if you are walking the Vía de la Plata, useless otherwise.

The Catch

Lalín will not seduce you at first glance. The shopping centre dated the minute it opened, Sunday feels like a lockdown drill, and the best museum is closed on the only day you have free. You need to lean in: accept the cocido coma, drive the winding lanes, ask the butcher why his chorizos are tied with nettle twine. Do that and the town repays with small, unfussy pleasures – a river no one has bottled, a Romanesque portal with the carving of a pilgrim who looks suspiciously like a lost Brit, and the dawning realisation that Galicia’s interior can taste every bit as good as the coast, provided you bring an appetite and a full tank of petrol.