Ortigueira

The ría sucks the sea out so fast that mooring ropes slacken in sympathy. By mid-morning the harbour floor glints like wet slate, and locals in wellies stride across what was water an hour earlier, collecting cockles with the same nonchalance a Londoner reserves for picking up the dry-cleaning. This twice-daily disappearing act is Ortigueira’s heartbeat; everything else – the cafés, the concerts, even the Monday market – simply keeps time with it.

Harbour first, everything else second

Five thousand souls live here, yet the place behaves like a provincial capital that forgot to grow up. The ayuntamiento occupies a modest 1950s block, chemists stay open late, and you can still buy spare parts for a 1989 Land Rover without anyone raising an eyebrow. Start at the stone pier where trawlers offload boxes of velvet crab: the catch is auctioned in rapid-fire Gallego at 09:00 sharp, and buyers from Lugo restaurants arrive with cool boxes strapped into the boots of tiny hire cars. Stick around and you’ll see the same crustaceans reappear at lunchtime, steamed and cracked open on metal trays inside Bar Puerto, €14 for half a kilo and a bib that actually reaches your elbows.

From the pier the paseo curves east for one kilometre, just long enough to justify an ice-cream yet short enough to finish before the drizzle returns. Elderly men in flat caps play cards under the pergola; teenagers practise skateboard tricks on the mosaic that spells “Ortigueira” in faded cobalt. The architecture is nothing special – whitewash, glass balconies, the occasional 1970s brick intrusion – but the amphitheatre of green hills behind gives the façades a borrowed grandeur. Come July, when the Festival Internacional do Mundo Céltico commandeers every flat surface, this same promenade turns into an impromptu stage for Breton bagpipers and Canadian fiddlers. Brits who swear they hate folk music find themselves humming reels at 02:00, plastic cup of Estrella in hand, while someone from Nova Scotia explains Celtic chord progressions over the thud of surf bass.

Low tide, high reward

Walk south until the railings end and the footpath dissolves into sand: you’ve reached the ría’s inner lip. At low tide the estuary becomes a 4-kilometre-wide puzzle of channels and oatmeal-coloured flats. Redshanks pick their way across the mud; a solitary heron keeps sentry outside the yacht club. The trick is to follow the locals onto the causeway that links the town to the first miniature island – a five-minute hop at neap tide, calf-deep at springs. From here Morouzos beach appears as a continuous blond arc, yet half an hour later the Atlantic refills the channel and the view fragments into a necklace of duney islets. If you timed it wrong, simply wait: the sea will drop again before supper.

Morouzos itself is backed by pine and eucalyptus rather than car parks, but don’t expect Robinson Crusoe solitude. August weekends fill with families from A Coruña who bring parasols, cool-box speakers and entire pollo al spiedo chickens. The undertow is mild, yet water temperature hovers around 18 °C even in mid-August – think Northumberland with better sunshine odds. Lifeguards pack up at 19:00; afterwards you can rinse feet at the outdoor tap and walk the 25 minutes back to town along the raised wooden boardwalk, counting jellyfish stranded in the eelgrass.

Coffee, cheese and the card-machine lottery

Calle Real, the commercial spine, is barely four blocks long. Drop into Panadería O Castro before 11:00 for empanada de zamburiñas – scallop pie sold by the square – and notice how every customer pays with notes, not contactless. Cards are accepted in larger restaurants, yet half the village economy still runs on cash stuffed into apron pockets. Mid-morning caffeine comes from Café Vagalume where an Americano costs €1.30 and the waitress will ask “¿tostada?” before you’ve removed your coat. Say yes: the toast arrives slathered with tomato pulp and a glug of olive oil, Galicia’s answer to beans on toast and twice as effective against the wind.

Cheese-wise, look for queixo de tetilla, a benign cone of cow’s-milk that even toddlers tolerate. The Saturday market under the plane trees stocks versions from a dairy 12 km inland; buy a quarter-wheel, wrap it in the provided cabbage leaf, and it will survive the flight home in hand luggage. If you need something stronger, Albariño from the Rías Baixas starts at €3.20 a glass, apple-sharp and designed to cut through octopus fat.

When the hills win the argument

Cloud build-up over the monte is visible long before it reaches the beach. On days when Morouzos turns monochrome, point the car south-west for the Serra da Faladoira, 20 minutes by single-track road that smells of pine and wet sheep. Park at the abandoned radar station (gravel lay-by, room for six cars, free) and follow the grassy firebreak west. The climb is 300 m, gentle enough for anyone who’s managed Arthur’s Seat without cardiac arrest, and the reward is a widescreen shot of the entire ría emptying into the Atlantic. Take a waterproof: Galician fog can erase the view faster than you can say “health and safety”.

Winter walkers get the trails to themselves, but be aware that daylight collapses at 18:00 and the road back is unlit. November to March also brings gales powerful enough to cancel the ferry to the Illa de San Vicente; check MeteoGalicia before committing to a coastal hike. Conversely, July festival-goers should book accommodation a calendar year ahead; otherwise you’ll end up in Cariño 15 km east, driving home at 03:00 behind coaches of euphoric percussionists.

Leaving without the souvenir cliché

Ortigueira won’t hand you a tidy tick-list. The church is pleasant, the museum is closed for renovation, and the castle everyone mentions online is actually a 1950s water tower with delusions of grandeur. What lingers is rhythm: the slap of water against harbour steps, the accordion riff drifting from a side street at dusk, the way shopkeepers pause mid-sentence to watch a trawler reverse into its berth. Stay two nights, three if you crave salt-lung mornings, and depart when the tide turns. You’ll carry away the smell of samphire on your shoes and an earworm of bagpipes you never meant to download – evidence, if you needed it, that the Atlantic fringe has its own playlists and they rarely include London voices.