Begonte

The road into Begonte climbs gently to 400 m, just high enough for the air to lose the coast’s salt and pick up the smell of wet grass and silage. From the car window the view widens into Terra Chá’s trademark tapestry: square meadows edged with wire, granite hórreos on stilts, and the occasional brown-and-white cow occupying the lane with the confidence of a taxpayer. This is not a village that stages itself for visitors; it is a working municipality of 5,000 souls spread across 36 parish hamlets, and the traffic jam ahead is more likely to be a tractor than a tourist coach.

Parish Hopping at Tractor Speed

Forget a single “old town”. Begonte’s civic centre is a short strip of chemist, bakery, agricultural supplier and the obligatory bar where the coffee is €1.20 if you stand at the counter. The architecture that matters is out in the parishes: Romanesque apse of Santa María de Begonte, the baroque tower of San Xoán de Caranta, or a tiny chapel at Goiáns whose bell still rings for evening mass. None is more than ten minutes’ drive from the next, yet the lanes between them dip and twist like damp ribbon, forcing a speed that lets detail sink in—stone crosses smothered by lichen, a slate roof patched with orange tin, a farmer mending fence while his dogs bark the afternoon away.

Sunday is the best, or worst, day to arrive. Locals pour out of 11 o’clock mass and head to The Corral on the main road for chuletón de ternera gallega—a rib steak that hangs over the plate and justifies the £22 price tag. Book ahead even in February; half of Lugo province seems to treat the place as its neighbourhood grill. Weekdays are quieter. The same family runs the kitchen but the set lunch drops to €12 for three courses, wine included, and you will eat among field hands still dusted with hay.

Rivers Without Signposts

The Parga river slips north-east of the centre, shallow and brown after rain, fringed with alder and the ruins of stone mills. There is no ticket office, no interpreted trail, just a lay-by wide enough for two cars and a path that starts between brambles. Follow it for ten minutes and the hum of the AC-934 fades, replaced by water clattering over a weir and the squeak of a gate that hasn’t seen oil since the last decade. Kingfishers flash here in early morning; otter prints appear if the mud is smooth. Anglers from Surrey and Bavaria book the Fly-fishing Galicia lodge upstream, paying £180 a night full board for exclusive brown-trout beats. Independents can fish on a day permit (€23 from the regional website) but need chest waders—there are no manicured pegs, just slippery boulders and waist-deep pools.

Walkers should think lanes rather than summits. The terrain is rolling, not alpine, yet the wind funnels across open fields with nothing sturdier than a gorse bush for shelter. In April the gorse flowers smell of coconut and the temperature sits in the mid-teens, perfect for a ten-kilometre circuit that takes in the hamlet of Paradela’s cruceiro and ends at the bakery in Guitiriz for a slice of tarta de Santiago. Summer can hit 32 °C at midday; start early or risk a sun-burnt trudge along unsheltered farm tracks. Winter is quieter, snow uncommon but fog routine—visibility can drop to 50 m, turning every stone wall into a potential dead end.

Beds and Other Practicalities

Begonte itself offers no hotels. The nearest beds are six kilometres away in Baamonde at the Ruta Esmeralda Hostal, a stone-built roadside house with wi-fi faster than most city centres and doubles from €70 including garage parking. The fly-fishing lodge nearer the river has four en-suite rooms, all named after trout flies, but minimum stay is three nights and non-anglers may feel outnumbered by waders drying in the hall. Car hire is essential: Ryanair and BA land at Santiago de Compostela in under two hours from London, and the A-6 motorway makes the 45-minute drive north straightforward. Public buses exist but run to a timetable written more for schoolchildren than for travellers; missing the 14.05 from Lugo means a two-hour wait on a plastic bench with no café.

Plastic is worth mentioning. Cards are still regarded with suspicion; the bakery prefers cash, the village pharmacy refuses anything under €5 on contactless, and the single ATM beside the town hall occasionally runs dry on market Thursday. Fill your wallet in Lugo if you are coming from the airport. Fuel is cheaper than the UK but garages close at 20.00; after that you are at the mercy of a 24-hour pump that accepts only Spanish debit cards.

Market-Day Realities

Thursday is market day. Vans park on the football pitch selling socks, cheap drill bits, and pyramids of peppers whose shine comes from a discreet spray bottle. It is functional, photogenic only if you like your commerce unfiltered. The same realism applies to the landscape: for every emerald meadow on Instagram there is a heap of rusty silage wrap waiting collection. Accept the contrast and Begonte makes sense—an economy built on milk quotas and timber, not on coach tours.

Rain is not a spoiler here; it is the reason the grass stays green enough to feed Galicia’s dairy herd. Pack a proper waterproof, not a festival poncho, and keep a change of shoes in the car. Tracks turn to chocolate-coloured glue within minutes of a shower; locals wear calf-length plastic gaiters that would not look out of place on a Cumbrian farm.

Heading Out Again

Leave by the LU-P-5011 and the horizon widens until the Celtic peaks of Os Ancares appear like torn paper on the skyline. Ten minutes west you can merge onto the autopista and be in Santiago’s airport bar before your seatback is cold. Stay longer and you might find yourself recognised in the bakery queue, your order remembered without asking. Begonte will never shout about itself, but it keeps a stool warm for whoever turns up expecting nothing more than a river without a signpost and a steak that needs sharing.