A Lama

The morning mist rolls uphill so fast you can watch it swallow a chestnut grove in real time. One minute the trees are sharp and green; the next they’re grey outlines, as if someone smudged the scene with a wet thumb. That meteorological sleight-of-hand is normal in A Lama, a scatter of parishes at 550 m on the inland shoulder of Pontevedra province. Coastal Galicia gets the Atlantic glamour; here you get granite, silence and the smell of damp leaves.

Roads that refuse to be straight

A Lama is not a single nucleated village but a string of hamlets—Fornelos, Sela, Toutón—hooked together by lanes so narrow the grass grows down the middle. From the PO-532 the tarmac twists upward through eucalyptus plantations, then breaks into sudden cow-sized clearings where stone hórreos (grain stores on stilts) stand like forgotten chapels. Distances mislead: 8 km on the map can take twenty-five minutes once you’ve slowed for stray dogs, delivery vans and the occasional shepherd on a quad. Sat-navs lose nerve altogether; phone signal dribbles away entirely in the valley of the Rego de Souto.

Most visitors arrive with a hire car collected at Vigo (50 min) or Santiago (1 h 20 min). Public transport exists—a morning bus from Ponteareas, an afternoon one back—but missing the return leg leaves you sleeping in the square. Bring cash before you leave the coast; the only ATM is in the small supermarket on Rúa do Cruceiro and it empties on Friday afternoons.

What passes for sights

There is no postcard concourse of palaces. Instead you collect fragments: a 16th-century cruceiro whose carved faces have been rubbed smooth by Galician rain; a communal wash-house where water still trickles across green slate; a water-mill half collapsed into ivy. The parish church of Santa María keeps its doors unlocked, cool Atlantic light falling on a baroque altarpiece gilded the colour of burnt toffee. Nobody charges admission and nobody offers commentary; you are left alone with the echo of your own footsteps.

Outside, the cemetery looks over the valley of the Verdugo river. On a clear evening—there are a few—you can see west to the low glitter of the Ría de Vigo, thirty kilometres away as the crow flies, twice that by road. More often the view ends abruptly in a wall of cloud, and the temperature drops five degrees in as many minutes.

Walking without a brochure

Footpaths are unsigned but followable if you surrender the British habit of needing to know exactly where you are. One gentle circuit leaves from the football pitch at A Lama proper, descends through sweet-chestnut coppice to the abandoned hamlet of O Fieital, then climbs back past a tiny shrine devoted to sailors lost at sea—odd, this far inland, until you remember that every family here once had sons on the trawlers of Vigo. The round takes ninety minutes; allow two if you stop to photograph mushrooms.

Harder going links Sela with the summit of O Xistral (640 m), a ridge shared with the neighbouring municipality of Fornelos de Montes. The path is a stony tractor track that turns to slick clay after rain; boots with tread are non-negotiable. The reward is a 360-degree prospect of oak forest giving way to commercial eucalyptus, the patchwork that fuels Galicia’s controversial timber trade. Spring brings drifts of blue squill; late October sets the chestnut canopy on fire.

Food that tastes of fog and firewood

There are no restaurants in the English sense—no white tablecloths, no tasting menus, no booking platforms. What exists is a handful of casa de comidas attached to village bars. Order the cocido gallego, a brick-thick broth of pork, chickpea and greens that arrives in a bowl big enough for two. Lacón con grelos—boiled pork shoulder with turnip tops—sounds Spartan but tastes smoky and sweet, especially when the greens have been kissed by frost. A quarter-litre of local Ribeiro wine costs €2.80 and arrives in a plain tumbler; accept it, you’re not in Soho.

If you self-cater, the Friday morning market in the main square sells honey scented with heather, chorizos looped like bicycle tyres, and Cea bread, whose Protected Geographical Status is taken as seriously here as Stilton is in Derbyshire. Bring a pocketful of euros; most stallholders can’t process cards and see no reason why they should.

When to come, when to stay away

April and May are the kindest months: daylight until nine, orchards in bloom, night temperatures that stay above 8 °C. September repeats the trick, with the bonus of chestnut husks swelling on the trees. Mid-summer is warm—28 °C at midday—but humidity wraps the hills like a wet towel and fog can slip in at dusk, canceling sunset views. Winter is not alpine—snow falls once or twice and melts by noon—but the lanes ice over in shadow and the heating in rural guesthouses is strictly wood-burner plus jumper. If you dislike the smell of wood-smoke, book elsewhere.

Easter and the August patronal fiesta fill the handful of casas rurales; reserve early or you’ll end up in Ponteareas, twenty minutes away by car and a world away in atmosphere. Outside those weeks you can usually find a double room for €55 including breakfast (strong coffee, thick toast, home-made quince jam). Check-out is 11 a.m. sharp; the owners need to get back to their allotments.

The honesty clause

A Lama will not suit everyone. Night-life stops when the last bar closes at half-past ten. Mobile coverage is patchy, and the nearest cinema is a thirty-minute drive. If you need souvenir shops, interpretive panels or flat, pushchair-friendly promenades, stay on the coast. What the place offers instead is the chance to see Galicia working rather than performing: farmers mending a hórreo roof, women clipping kale for winter soup, a tractor headlights-on at dawn heading for the mist-swallowed hills. Stay a couple of days, walk until your boots are the same colour as the soil, and you may decide that granite, oak and fog tell a better story than any souvenir ever could.