As Somozas

The church of Santa María de Devesa appears suddenly after a bend, its stone cross standing guard where two lanes meet. There's no car park, no ticket booth, not even a signpost—just the bell tower, a scatter of houses and the smell of wet grass. This is how As Somozas announces itself: not with a fanfare but with a question—what are you looking for?

A parish map instead of a high street

Five thousand people live spread across 70 square kilometres of mild hills and narrow valleys, twenty minutes inland from Ferrol's shipyards. Unlike the coastal villages that string their houses along a single waterfront, As Somozas is a mosaic of eighteen parishes, each organised around its church, cemetery and a handful of smallholdings. Directions are given by bell tower rather than road name; distances feel longer because the road dips and climbs between every hamlet. If you arrive expecting a chocolate-box centre, you'll drive straight through the middle and wonder where the village went.

What you get instead is a working landscape of cows, leant-to hay barns and granite corn cribs called hórreos, built high enough on stone staddles to keep rats out of the grain. Some date from the eighteenth century and carry the owner's initials carved into the wood; others have been patched with corrugated iron and still hold last year's potatoes. They are not monuments, they're farm kit, and the prettiness is accidental.

When to come (and when to stay away)

April and May turn the meadows an almost violent green; foxgloves appear along the verges and the temperature sits in the high teens—perfect for walking without the sweat of high summer. September repeats the trick, with the bonus of chestnuts ripening in the woods above the 400 m contour. Mid-winter is quieter, but Atlantic storms can make minor roads impassable; if you must visit between December and February, bring waterproof boots and assume any track marked "pista particular" will be mud.

Summer itself is warm rather than hot—mid-twenties at most—yet the grass browns quickly and photography flattens under the harsh light. Locals tend to work early, siesta at noon, then return to the fields until dusk; plan walks for the same rhythm if you want shade and bird song.

How to read a landscape that isn't trying to impress

The tourist office in Ferrol will hand you a road map; it won't tell you that the best guide is a pair of eyes tuned to detail. Start at San Xoán de Somozas: park opposite the bar (the only one in the parish, opens at 07:30 for coffee and brandy), note the cruceiro carved with a skull and crossbones, then follow the lane west for fifteen minutes until you reach a stone bridge over a stream. The path narrows into a farm track; cows will watch but rarely block the way. You have now seen the three repeating elements of the municipality—religious stone, running water and pasture fenced with eucalyptus posts.

Carry on another kilometre and you'll pass an abandoned water mill, wheels gone but the sluice still intact. There is no admission charge, no interpretive panel; the reward is simply the creak of branches and the smell of damp granite. Turn back when the track begins to climb steeply: beyond here it joins a forestry road planted with fast-growing pine, scenery that could be anywhere in northern Europe.

Food that follows the farm calendar

Restaurants are thin on the ground—As Somozas has two, both in the main village of O Pobo. Mesón O Cruceiro serves a fixed lunch menu for €12 mid-week: soup thick with cabbage and beans, followed by lacón con grelos (boiled pork shoulder with turnip tops) and a jug of local wine. Vegetarians will struggle; coeliacs should ask for cachelos (plain boiled potatoes) rather than bread. Dinner is only available at weekends and must be booked by telephone before noon, because the owner shops once a day in Ferrol and cooks what she buys.

If you're self-catering, the small supermarket on Avenida de Galicia stocks bread baked in neighbouring Narón and vacuum-packed tetilla cheese. Expect to pay €18 per kilo for properly aged queixo, less than half the price in Santiago's tourist market. In October the roadside honesty boxes appear: leave €3 in a tin and take a kilo of chestnuts, or swap a bottle of home-made orujo for a dozen free-range eggs.

Moving about without a car (or with too much of one)

Public transport exists but follows school, not tourist, timetables. A single MonBus line links O Pobo with Ferrol at 07:45 and returns at 19:10; miss it and a taxi costs €28. Cycling is feasible if you don't mind gradients—count on 250 m of climb whichever direction you choose. Drivers face the opposite problem: lanes narrow to a single car's width with no passing places. If the verge is cropped short, a farmer expects to get a tractor through; park on it and you'll return to find a politely furious note in Galician under the wiper.

A good compromise is to base yourself in Ferrol, hire a small car for the day and do a slow loop: start at Devesa, drive north to the Romanesque church of San Martiño de Montouto, then descend to the tea-house in A Gándara for homemade tarta de Santiago before heading back. Total distance is 38 km, enough to see five parishes without spending more than ten minutes on any major road.

What you will not find (and why that matters)

There is no artisanal cheese shop, no bilingual guided tour, no Sunday craft market. Fiesta calendars change annually; the Corpus Christi procession that wound through three parishes last year may be held in a single square next June. Accepting this unpredictability is part of the deal—As Somozas offers a glimpse of rural Galicia as it is lived, not as it is packaged.

That honesty cuts both ways. A meadow that looks idyllic may also be fertilised with slurry; the smell drifts and lingers. Cattle grids across paths are rarely signed—lift dogs over to save their paws. Rain here isn't atmospheric; it soaks soil into slick mud that will ruin suede shoes and test hire-car tyres. Bring practicality, not romance.

Leaving without the souvenir shot

Most visitors photograph the hórreos: raised granaries against green hills, perfection for Instagram. Yet the image that lingers is subtler—an old woman in overalls scrubbing the church step at 08:00, a tractor indicator blinking amber in sea-fog, the sound of a single bell calling a scattered parish to mass. You can't bottle that, and the village is not trying to sell it. Drive away slowly: the cattle grid at the junction rattles like applause, then As Somozas returns to its own affairs, which never centred on you in the first place.