Mondariz

The river Tea is only 40 km long, yet it has already carved a miniature fjord by the time it passes Mondariz. Stand on the stone footbridge below the church of San Martiño and you can taste Atlantic salt on the wind even though the ocean is 25 km away. That contradiction – coastal air at 125 m above sea level – is the first clue that the maps don’t tell the whole story.

Mondariz proper spreads across both banks of the Tea, a scatter of stone hamlets linked by lanes just wide enough for a tractor and a nodding driver. Administratively it is separate from Mondariz-Balneario, the spa settlement five minutes down the PO-340. Keep the distinction in mind or you will spend half your holiday explaining to locals why you turned up at the village bakery asking for thermal-pool vouchers.

Romanesque and river mud

San Martiño itself is the sort of church guidebooks describe as “unassuming” before admitting they rather like it. Built in the twelfth century, it is low, square and the colour of weathered barley. Swallows nest under the eaves; the cemetery slopes downhill so that every grave has a view across the valley. Morning mass finishes at 09:15; after that you will probably have the place to yourself except for the widow who polishes the brass and keeps the door key on a shoelace round her neck.

Below the church a farm track drops to the river. The path is signed, but only just. Galicia’s regional government has started marking short circular walks – yellow dashes on fence posts, occasional mileage that makes optimistic assumptions about your footwear. After rain the Tea path is slick red clay; British walking boots acquire an extra half-stone of local geography. The reward is a 3 km loop through alder and persimmon groves where the only sound is chestnuts dropping on corrugated-iron roofs. In October the river smells of fern and fermenting leaves; in April it smells of mint and wet slate. Both seasons beat August, when the water level drops and every riverside stone becomes a perch for Spanish families armed with portable barbecues and Bluetooth speakers.

Two villages, one valley

Drive south for five minutes and you enter a different century. Mondariz-Balneario was purpose-built in 1907 around a thermal spring that bubbles up at 60 °C rich in calcium, magnesium and whatever else Edwardian doctors thought cured gout. The Gran Hotel, now a hollow façade with ivy in its grand ballroom, once welcomed King Alfonso XIII and a clientele who arrived by private railway from Vigo. Today the spa complex is a low white building that looks like a 1970s university campus redesigned by someone who had heard the word “wellness”. Inside, the water is still hyped as a remedy for everything from arthritis to stress. A 90-minute “Circuito Termal” costs €28 and includes indoor-outdoor pools, steam caverns and the obligatory corridor of jets aimed at shoulder blades you never knew were tense. Book online the day before; British visitors who turn up in flip-flops at 11 a.m. are regularly turned away because every slot is full of Galician retirees doing their doctor-prescribed aquarobics.

The nine-hole golf course next door is another surprise. Fairways follow the river so faithfully that the fourth green is an island when the Tea floods. Green fee is €25 for a round; club hire another €15. Bring old balls – the river Tea digests more Titleists per square metre than any course in Iberia.

What arrives on the back of a tractor

Food in Mondariz is farm-based, not beach-bar. Expect trout from the Tea, pork from the next village, and wine from the neighbouring sub-zone of O Condado. The local speciality is “trucha a la mondariesa” – pan-fried, flambéed with aguardiente and finished with almonds. It tastes like kippers meet amaretto and works better than it deserves to. Pulpo (octopus) is everywhere, but portions are negotiable; ask for a “media ración” and you will get four tentacles rather than eight. If you reach dessert saturation, tarta de Santiago is reliably on offer: almond sponge topped with the cross of St James stencilled in icing sugar. Gluten-free travellers rejoice – it contains nothing but almonds, eggs and sugar, though you will still be charged the full €5.50 for the privilege.

Lunch service stops dead at 15:30. Arrive at 15:35 and even the bar dog has clocked off. The single supermarket in Mondariz closes at 20:00 and stocks UHT milk, tinned asparagus and little else that resembles British groceries. Vigo’s Carrefour is 25 minutes down the AP-9 – stock up there if self-catering or you will spend your holiday eating custard creams from the petrol station.

Altitude, attitude and access

At 220 m above sea level Mondariz is high enough to escape summer’s coastal mugginess but not high enough for reliable snow. Winter brings Atlantic fronts that dump 150 mm of rain in a weekend; lanes turn to toffee and the council simply closes the worst ones until March. If you are renting a cottage in January, a front-wheel-drive with decent tyres is the minimum; the chap who arrives in a low-slung BMW usually meets a local farmer with a tow-rope and an invoice. Spring, by contrast, is ludicrously green, and autumn lights the chestnut woods the colour of burnt toffee. Those are the seasons to walk the old path from Sabaxáns to Pías, past hórreos (stone granaries on stilts) still used for storing maize and the occasional ride-on mower.

Public transport exists on paper: a Monbus service from Vigo twice daily that reaches Mondariz at 08:10 and 19:40. Miss it and a taxi costs €40. Most British visitors hire a car at Vigo airport, drive north for 35 minutes and leave the vehicle in the church square where parking is free and the only risk is a goat nibbling your windscreen wipers.

The quiet that follows the water

Mondariz will never make the Galicia “top ten” lists because it refuses to summarise itself in a single plaza. It is a territory rather than a postcard: river, farms, spa, forest, scattered stone. Some travellers find that diffuse; others discover they have spent three days without headphones and cannot remember what they meant to hurry on to next. If you need constant stimulation, stay in Santiago. If you are happy to measure a day by the number of trout rises you count on the Tea and the gradual shift of sun across San Martiño’s stone, Mondariz keeps a pew – and probably a slice of almond tart – ready.