Lemoa (Lemona)

The 17:05 Euskotren from Bilbao squeals to a halt at a platform that feels more like a suburban bus stop than a gateway to the Basque countryside. Passengers spill out, phones already glowing with messages from family: "¿Estás llegando?" This is Lemoa—less a destination, more a punctuation mark in other people’s journeys—yet if you stay on the platform an extra thirty seconds you’ll notice the air carries the scent of cut grass rather than diesel, and the hillsides behind the station car park flush green even in January.

A Village That Refuses to Pose

Lemoa won’t give you the photograph you think you want. There is no medieval bridge, no balconied plaza framed by geraniums, no artisan ice-cream shop with a chalkboard in Comic Sans. Instead you get a working grid of low-rise apartment blocks, a single-fronted bakery whose window still advertises Bollos de mantequilla at 1980s prices, and a parish church, San Esteban, whose doors open only when the sacristan remembers the key is in his other coat. Walk the narrow pavement at school-home time and you’ll share it with teenagers arguing about football and grandparents dragging wheeled shopping bags the size of cabin luggage. It is ordinary, lived-in, stubbornly real.

Drop down one street, however, and the ordinariness begins to tilt. Calle Allende Mayor ends abruptly in pasture; cows stare over a wire fence at a row of wheelie bins. Follow the lane between the bins and within four minutes the tarmac gives way to a soil track that threads between vegetable plots and walnut trees. The Ibaizabal river slides past on your left, slow and brown, carrying the runoff of a valley that still makes paper, still smelts small batches of steel, still feeds Bilbao’s appetite for labour. A freight train clanks across the view, then the sound folds back into birdsong. You are, without fanfare, in countryside—yet the bus stop remains in sight.

The Hills Start at the Edge of Town

Lemoa sits at 96 m above sea level, low for Basque mountain standards, but the slopes rise fast. Head uphill on the minor road signposted Alzibide and within ten minutes the gradient bites. Stone farmhouses—baserriak—appear, their wooden balconies painted the ox-blood red once reserved for whaling boats. Many still have the family name carved into the lintel and a year (1789, 1834, 1921) that tells you when the present façade replaced whatever fire or flood wiped out its predecessor. Dogs bark from behind gates sturdy enough to stop a tractor; washing flaps on rotary lines even when the mist rolls in. This is not museum-Basque-country; it is Tuesday.

The tarmac narrows to a single lane with passing bays. Drivers raise a hand in thanks, the local equivalent of a nod on a Yorkshire back road. If you keep climbing you reach the col of Galdakao at 420 m, where the view opens west towards the limestone wall of Ganekogorta (998 m). That summit is officially in the neighbouring municipality, but Lemoa’s residents treat it as their own weather vane: cloud cap means rain before teatime, clear ridge means shirtsleeves until seven. The path to the top is a stiff three-hour pull; boots, not trainers, and carry a layer even in July because Atlantic weather arrives unannounced.

What Passes for Sights

Guidebooks stumble over Lemoa because it has no sights in the checklist sense. The church interior, when open, holds a single curiosity: a 16th-century polychrome Pietà whose paint was stripped during the Civil War and never restored, leaving the Virgin’s face a ghostly wood-grain. The town hall flies the ikurriña beside a banner announcing the next pelota match; inside, staff will gladly print a tide-table for the Mundaka surf break even though the coast is 25 km away. That is about it.

Yet movement itself becomes the attraction. A 5 km loop follows the river south to the hamlet of Zugastinaga, where an old paper mill has been converted into small workshops—one makes bespoke bicycle frames, another restores oak barrels. You can’t go in uninvited, but the forecourt smells of fresh-cut beech and hot steel, a reminder that Basque industry began in riverside sheds like these long before the Guggenheim’s titanium curves. Circle back on the opposite bank and you’ll pass a football pitch edged by cornfields; Saturday matches are free to watch, half-time refreshments limited to instant coffee or calimocho (red wine and cola) sold from a hatch.

Eating, Sleeping, Timing

Food options within the village boundary amount to Bar Zuria on Plaza San Esteban, open 07:00–22:00 except Monday afternoon when everybody, inexplicably, cleans their garage. Expect tortilla the diameter of a tractor wheel, pintxos of anchovy and guindilla speared with a cocktail stick, and a coffee machine that has been hissing since 1987. A three-course menú del día costs €12 and arrives with a carafe of house wine you will not finish if you intend to walk back uphill afterwards.

For anything fancier you travel: ten minutes by taxi to Amorebieta where Asador Arriaga grills chuleton over holm-oak coals, or fifteen minutes on the A3911 bus to Gernika’s Saturday market for fried squid rolls and cider poured from height. Accommodation follows the same rule. Lemoa itself has no hotel, only a pair of rural apartments booked through the regional tourist board—fine if you fancy self-catering and a dawn rooster chorus. Otherwise stay in Durango (15 min by train) where the Hotel Gernika offers reliably dull rooms and secure bike storage, or ride the 25 minutes into Bilbao for the full urban choice.

Getting Here, Getting Out

Bilbao airport to Lemoa is 35 km: land before 17:00 and you can be in the village before the evening mist forms. Hire cars pick up at the terminal; follow the BI-636 to Amorebieta and watch for the brown sign that half-heartedly suggests Lemoa – Centro Urbano. Public transport is cheaper but demands patience: airport bus to Bilbao Termibus (€3, 15 min), then BizkaiBus A3911 (€1.65, 40 min). Trains run every thirty minutes, but the last departure back to Bilbao is 22:57—miss it and a taxi costs around €35.

The same timetable makes Lemoa practical as a two-hour detour rather than a base. Arrive mid-morning, walk the river loop, eat tortilla, catch the 14:32 eastbound to Durango and you still reach San Sebastián in time for pintxo hopping. Conversely, use the village as an overnight pause on a cross-Peninsula drive: rooms are half the price of coastal equivalents, and the night sky, free of beach-bar floodlights, lets you relearn the Milky Way.

The Honest Verdict

Lemoa will not change your life. It offers no epiphany, no brag-worthy selfie, no artisanal souvenir carved from reclaimed ship timber. What it does provide is the Basque Country stripped of brochure gloss: a place where industry and agriculture still share the same valley floor, where grandmothers gossip in Basque while unloading supermarket bags from the boot of a Renault Clio, where the hills begin so abruptly you can stand with one foot on concrete and the other on meadow. Come for the passing through, stay for the not-much—then leave before you dilute the very ordinariness that makes it briefly interesting.