Baiona

The fog lifts in minutes. One second the Cíes Islands are gone, the next they float back like ships that had slipped anchor. Nobody on the seafront pauses; Baiona’s residents have watched this trick since childhood. Visitors, meanwhile, reach for their phones, convinced they’ve witnessed something rare. They haven’t—it’s just Tuesday.

Working harbour, open-air balcony

Baiona never stopped being a port. Fishing boats still chug out at dawn, returning before the cafés stop serving coffee. Their catch reaches the quay at Plaza de Santa Liberata, where octopus and hake are auctioned in rapid Galician. The language is incomprehensible to most Brits, yet the maths is clear: the larger the crate, the wider the grin.

A replica of the Pinta is moored further along. In 1493 this caravel brought news of Columbus’s landfall to Europe—first landfall was here, not Lisbon as schoolbooks claim. You can board the copy if the tide, staff and lottery of municipal timetables align; otherwise admire the rigging from the pier and read the panels for free.

Behind the harbour wall, the old town is a five-minute shuffle of stone arcades and granite mansions built with Peruvian silver. Look up: the coats of arms are original, the balconies sag like tired eyebrows. Night-time lighting is gentle, almost apologetic, so the medieval shadows remain intact. British couples wandering back from supper often remark that it feels “a bit like Tenby, but with tapas.”

The peninsula you can’t skip

Monterreal fort, now a parador, squats on the headland. You don’t need to sleep there to walk its ramparts; the public path threads three kilometres around the cliff edge. Halfway round, a stone bench faces west and somebody has carved “RESPIRA” into the wood. Take the advice: the view swallows Vigo’s estuary whole, and on clear evenings the sun drops exactly between the Cíes’ two granite humps. Instagram geotags it as “Baiona Maldives” which is optimistic; the water is eighteen degrees in August and jellyfish arrive uninvited. Still, the sand is clean, smoking is banned, and there are no donkey rides or karaoke bars—reason enough for many Brits to stay the week.

Beaches without the Magaluf factor

Praia da Ribeira lies two streets from the old centre. It’s 250 metres of honey-coloured sand sheltered by the breakwater, handy for families who need a loo and a churro within thirty seconds. Volume rises in July: Spanish school holidays, Portuguese long weekends, the odd cruise excursion. Arrive after five and you’ll share it with locals playing fútbol and teenage couples practising their English swearing.

For space, walk twenty minutes south to Praia de Ladeira—one mile of open Atlantic backed by pines. Atlantic waves dump hard here; red flags fly more often than green. Body-boarders love it, grandparents less so. Bring change for the beach-side shower (50 c) and don’t leave belongings unattended while you swim; the breeze invites opportunists.

Eating: beyond the octopus dilemma

Galician waiters can spot a tentative Brit at twenty paces and will kindly offer “chips with everything.” Resist. Start with empanada de zamburiñas—minced scallops in pastry, mild as a Cornish pasty. Move on to grilled rodaballo (turbot) at Restaurante Yayo: €24 but it feeds two. House white is Albariño, sharp enough to scrub your tongue after salt spray. If tentacles terrify you, order chipirones; they’re baby squid, rings without the rubber-band chew. Dessert is tarta de Santiago, almond cake dusted with the St James cross. By law every café serves it; quality ranges from sawdust to heavenly. Recuncho Mariñeiro’s version is somewhere in between, but their €14 menú del día includes wine and a view of fishing nets drying—fair trade.

Islands that ration tourists

The Cíes archipelago is visible from every Baiona rooftop, yet only 2,200 people may set foot each day. Book the ferry online before you travel, especially in August when permits sell out by 10 a.m. Boats leave Baiona’s harbour at 10:15 and return 17:30; the crossing takes 40 minutes and costs €22 return. Pack water—there’s only one kiosk and it charges airport prices. The walk to the summit lighthouse is 45 minutes uphill, steep enough to make you regret that second doughnut. At the top, the cliff drops 170 m straight into turquoise water that looks Caribbean until your toes confirm it’s still the Atlantic in March.

When to bother—and when not

June and early September give you 24-degree days without stag parties. Easter is warm enough for T-shirts but bring a raincoat; Atlantic fronts arrive fast. Winter is quiet, inexpensive, occasionally spectacular: waves explode over the battlements and seafoam drifts across the road like snow. Hotels drop to €55 but half the restaurants close. August is a different town: traffic backs up to the N550, car parks close gates by 11 a.m. and the parador charges €320 for a standard double. If that’s your only window, arrive Friday morning or leave Sunday evening—Saturdays are gridlock.

Getting here without the hire-car row

Vigo airport, 30 km away, has no direct UK flights. EasyJet serves Santiago (1 h 20 by bus) and Porto (2 h drive). From Vigo airport, hop on the LAR bus to Vigo Urzaiz (€1.30, 20 min) then the XG883 to Baiona (€2.30, 30 min). Services run hourly except Sunday afternoons, when they pretend Galicia has shut. Taxis from Vigo cost €45—agree the fare first; meters sometimes “fail.” Parking in Baiona is free on the western ring road, a ten-minute level stroll to the centre. Blue zones in town are €1.20 an hour, enforced even when the attendant is having a cigarette.

What the brochures miss

Rain can fall horizontally here; umbrellas become abstract sculpture. Mobile signal fades inside the stone lanes—download maps before you wander. Supermarkets shut at 14:00 on Saturday and stay shut Sunday; if you arrive late weekend, breakfast Monday morning will be soggy crisps from the Chinese bazaar. Finally, the Pinta replica is often “en mantenimiento”; scaffolding photographs badly and children sulk. Treat the ship as a bonus, not a promise.

Baiona will not change your life, but it might realign your sense of time. The day begins with fog horns and ends with church bells, and somewhere in between the Atlantic rewrites the script. Turn up, walk the walls, eat something that swam that morning, and leave before you start expecting the islands to appear on cue.