Vilalba

The octagonal tower rises from a car park rather than a castle mound, which tells you most of what you need to know about Vilalba. This is a working market town first, tourist destination a distant second. At 450 metres above sea level, the air carries a sharpness that makes even July evenings feel like September in Devon. Locals treat the 15th-century Torre de los Andrade as background furniture – they'll park beside it, chat beneath it, barely glance up at the honey-coloured stone that British visitors photograph from every angle.

That tower now houses the Parador, and thick medieval walls make the rooms eerily quiet. Book early for April if you want to experience the San Simón Cheese Fair without a 30-minute drive to the nearest available bed. The fair fills the main square with rounds of tear-drop cheese the colour of wet sand, each one gently smoked over birch wood. Even visitors who normally avoid anything stronger than Cheddar find themselves buying an entire wheel, vacuum-packed for the Ryanair flight home from Santiago.

Vilalba's daily rhythm centres on the Thursday market when farmers from across Terra Chá roll in with white vans full of cabbages, live chickens and tools that look medieval themselves. The town doubles in energy but loses its parking – arrive before ten if you've hired a car, or you'll circle the one-way system behind elderly women who walk four abreast and refuse to hurry for anyone.

The historic core takes twenty minutes to cross, assuming you don't stop to examine the stone arcades or peer into the butcher's window where whole rabbits hang beside locally-made empanadas. These pork-and-potato pies arrive in metre-long slabs, sold by weight and wrapped in white paper that turns translucent with grease within minutes. They're perfect walking food for the riverside path that starts five minutes from the church, though you'll want sturdy shoes after rain – Galician clay clings to soles like wet concrete.

Santa María church won't appear in any coffee-table book of European architecture. It's been rebuilt so many times that Romanesque arches sit beside Baroque clutter, creating a jumble that somehow suits Vilalba's pragmatic character. Inside, the air smells of incense and floor wax, with none of the selfie-stick circus found in Santiago or Lugo. Drop a euro in the box and the elderly caretaker might unlock the sacristy to show you a 16th-century altarpiece that still bears traces of original paint.

Food here follows the agricultural calendar with stubborn precision. Winter means caldo gallego – a broth thick enough to stand a spoon in, laden with turnip greens and chorizo that stains the broth sunset-orange. Summer brings grilled beef from local farms, served rare unless you specifically request otherwise. The waiters will ask anyway – they assume foreigners want everything cremated. Pulpo arrives on wooden boards, purple tentacles dusted with paprika that gets under your fingernails and stains your shirt if you're not careful. It's worth trying once; the texture sits somewhere between calamari and chicken breast, with none of the rubber-band bounce that puts people off.

Evening tapas don't start before 20:30, which gives you time to walk the Madalena river route where old water mills slump beside the water like abandoned sheds. The path stretches four kilometres through alder and birch, flat enough for pushchairs though you'll share it with cyclists who ring their bells with Galician urgency – polite but insistent. Kingfishers flash turquoise above the water, and if you sit quietly on the stone bridge, you'll hear nothing but water and the occasional tractor in surrounding fields.

Access requires planning. The railway station closed years ago, so you'll arrive by ALSA coach from Lugo or A Coruña. Buses drop you in Praza da Constitución, two minutes' walk from the Parador but a twelve-minute hike if you're staying at the modern hotel near the industrial estate. Hire cars make sense if you want to reach Charca do Alligal – thermal springs ten minutes away where locals swim year-round, steam rising from the water like a Scandinavian spa but without the entrance fee or designer changing rooms.

Winter brings fog that swallows the surrounding farmland, reducing visibility to the length of a cricket pitch. Temperatures hover around five degrees, cold enough to make the chestnut-roasting stalls outside the December Capon Fair seem like survival equipment rather than festive cheer. This controversial bird – castrated cockerel fattened for months – tastes like the most tender roast chicken you've ever eaten, with skin that crisps to golden parchment. Vegetarians should avoid Vilalba entirely during December; even the vegetable soup uses meat stock because that's how grandmother made it.

Spring proves kinder, when gorse turns the hillsides yellow and wild garlic carpets the riverbanks. The cheese fair coincides with almond blossom, creating a weekend when the town smells simultaneously of wood-smoke and honey. Hotels fill six months ahead – British pilgrims walking the Camino del Norte book the Parador as a luxury treat after weeks of hostel bunks. They arrive dusty and sunburned, ordering rioja by the glass while their hiking boots dry beside the medieval hearth.

Don't expect nightlife. The last pub closes at 02:00, though most people are tucked up by midnight after the traditional paseo along the river. Friday night means teenagers circling the main square on mopeds, engines tuned to sound like racing bikes but achieving only mosquito-whine volume. Saturday brings extended family groups – grandparents to toddlers – walking in formation before settling into restaurants for the three-course menu del día that costs less than a London sandwich.

Leave time for the Prehistory Museum, housed in a modern building that locals consider architecturally daring but wouldn't merit a second glance in Manchester. The collection covers 200,000 years of human habitation, from stone axes to Roman jewellery found in nearby fields. It's closed Mondays, like most restaurants and half the shops – turn up then and you'll find a ghost town where even the café shutters stay down.

Vilalba rewards patience rather than tick-box tourism. Stay two nights minimum; the first to recover from travel and adjust to the slower pulse, the second to explore properly. Buy cheese, walk the river, eat lunch at two o'clock with the farmers. Then catch the coach back to Santiago airport, watching Terra Chá's wide horizons shrink into rear-view mirror. You won't have seen everything – the churches, the springs, the villages where stone houses sink into moss-covered ruins. But you'll have tasted Galicia without the coastal crowds, and that might be enough to bring you back.