Moeche

The cannonball wedged in Moeche’s keep wall isn’t medieval decoration. It was fired in 1467 by tenant farmers who had marched uphill, torched the manor archives and declared the end of feudal dues. Their revolt—the Irmandiños—lasted three summers, failed, and is still explained with pride by the castle guide who greets every visitor by name and insists on practising English phrases learned from a Sheffield cousin. That five-minute introduction sets the tone for the village: small, personal, and faintly astonished that anyone has driven up the CU-560 to find it.

Moeche sits fifteen kilometres inland from the Ría de Ferrol, high enough (250 m) to escape Atlantic fog but too low to qualify as mountain. The result is a landscape of short, steep valleys where eucalyptus plantations alternate with cow pastures the colour of snooker-table baize. There is no romantic harbour, no beach bar circuit, just a scatter of stone hamlets linked by lanes so narrow that two Citroëns meeting require a choreography of reversing. What pulls people here is the castle, a neat rectangle of dressed granite restored in 2008 and now the sole ticketed attraction for fifty square kilometres. Entry is €2.50, exact coins preferred because the ticket desk is a kitchen tin. Tours run on the hour from 16:00, reopen after the statutory Galician lunch break, and finish at 18:00 sharp so the caretaker can feed his rabbits.

Inside, the atmosphere is more village museum than military monument. Exhibits include a facsimile of the 1467 peace treaty (written in Galician, Latin and broken Castilian), a smell-box of local gorse flower, and a 3-D printed model of the castle before its seventeenth-century roof collapsed. Children are handed a cardboard helmet; adults get a laminated sheet comparing English peasant revolts with the Irmandiños. The whole circuit takes twenty minutes, after which the guide locks the door and usually asks where you are heading for supper. Directions will be precise—“second turning after the eucalyptus stump painted yellow”—because Google still thinks the nearest restaurant is a tractor garage.

That restaurant, Mesón O Campo, is a 1930s farmhouse with a single chimney big enough to smoke the weekly supply of chorizo hanging overhead. Half-raciones are served without fuss; a plate of pimientos de Padrón and a chuletón for two costs €28 and arrives on a plank hot enough to keep your wine warm. Vegetarians survive on tetilla cheese—mild, buttery, shaped like a breast and ideal for anyone who finds Spanish blues too aggressive. Drinkable Ribeiro is poured from a chipped jug; asking for the wine list produces a shrug and a gesture towards the barrel. Credit cards work, but the terminal is connected to a router kept in the bread bin, so patience is part of the bill.

Walk the meal off along the Ruta da Pedra e da Auga, a sign-posted loop that leaves from the churchyard of San Xoán. The path follows an irrigation channel built by monks in 1150, passes three stone crosses carved with ship motifs, and ends at a hórreo raised on mushroom-shaped stilts. Way-marking is refreshingly honest: a yellow arrow daubed on a cowpat, or a scallop shell nailed to a fence where the official signboard blew away. After rain the clay sticks to boots like wet biscuit, so the tourist office—one desk inside the town hall—keeps a box of plastic overshoes by the door. Take them; laundry facilities are non-existent.

Drivers have the advantage of linking Moeche with Miraz (ten minutes south) where another tiny castle hosts weekend pottery workshops, or Betanzos (twenty minutes east) whose medieval centre supplies cappuccino and cash machines—both absent in Moeche. Public transport exists but feels designed to deter. Two buses leave Ferrol at 07:45 and 14:15, and the return legs depart Moeche before the castle has opened. A taxi from Betanzos costs €28 on the meter, but there are only four licensed cars covering the entire comarca. Pre-book or be prepared to sleep in the castle car park, a gravel patch shared with the village’s single vending machine and a very territorial goose.

Accommodation choices follow the same pattern of almost-but-not-quite. The nearest hotel is a converted pazo at Pazo do Souto, ten kilometres away, where rooms start at €85 including a breakfast tray of filloas (Galician crêpes) and homemade apple jam. Closer options are private: villagers will rent a spare bedroom for €30 if asked in person, but Airbnb has yet to discover the postcode. Camping is tolerated beside the sports pavilion, provided you register at the ayuntamiento and donate €5 to the football team. Showers are cold unless the PE teacher remembers to turn the boiler on.

Weather governs everything. Moeche’s inland position softens coastal gales but attracts Atlantic rainheads that empty over the hills. April and May deliver luminous green pastures and orchards loud with cuckoos; September brings purple arándanos along the paths and temperatures warm enough to eat outside at eight o’clock. July can hit 34 °C at midday, when even the castle guide retreats to the cellar and dogs lie panting under parked cars. Winter is quiet, occasionally snowy, and beautiful in the ruthless way that makes you grateful for central heating forty kilometres away.

Come with modest expectations and the place adds up. An hour in the castle, a circular walk, a three-course lunch and a conversation about Welsh rainfall with the guide fills an afternoon that feels longer than it costs. What you remember later is not a checklist of sights but small, specific images: the sound of hooves as a farmer drives cows past the church at milking time; the smell of eucalyptus bark drying on a woodpile; the sight of a 3-D printed cannonball glowing purple in the exhibition spotlight, proof that even the smallest Galician village now owns a piece of the future.

Bring cash, waterproof soles and enough Spanish to say “otra tetilla, por favor”. Leave before dusk if you’re relying on the bus; stay after dark if you want the sky the Irmandiños saw—no streetlights, just Orion tilting over a stone keep that peasants once tried, briefly, to turn into democracy.