The narrow path weaved along the side of a vertiginous promontory carpeted with ferns and the occasional cluster of buttercups and purple hollyhocks. Wispy tendrils of fog dissolved, and the June sunshine warmed my back as I stood on a wind-sculpted granite boulder and peered into the Atlantic Ocean’s cobalt depths. The cries of gulls mixed with the sound of waves crashing against the rocks, releasing cascades of salt-charged spray. I could still see the fingernail outline of the creamy beach we’d traversed earlier, where plovers scuttled from the incoming tide.
Once in a while, I discover a place so surprising, so unspoiled that it’s conflicting to write about it. What if the article helps tip the scale between the unknown and inundated? The Camino dos Faros, or Lighthouse Way, along the north-west tip of Spain in Galicia is such a place.
There is, of course, another camino in these parts. The Camino de Santiago reached its modern-day record in 2022, with more than 438,000 pilgrims walking to what many believe to be the final resting place of the apostle Saint James. The Camino de Santiago generally follows paved roads and ends at Santiago de Compostela, although some pilgrims continue on a spur of the Camino de Santiago to the Finisterre Lighthouse. Few knowabout the new, nearby, vastly more-meditative Lighthouse Way, which also ends at the Finisterre Lighthouse, but follows a completely different, liminal pathway between sea and land along the often stormy, sometimes serene Costa da Morte (Coast of Death). The Lighthouse Way offers an invigorating alternative as we all search for more space, more serenity and more meaningful immersion in wild landscapes that retain a powerful connection to ancient ways.
On our five-day walk, my husband and I saw just eight other people on the trail.
The Coast of Death has seen more than 150 shipwrecks over the last century (Credit: Basotxerri /Alamy)
The Costa da Morte is among the most dangerous of the world’s shipping routes, with more than 150 shipwrecks over the last century – hence, the 14 lighthouses. It’s also one of the most pristine wild coasts in Europe. Forget your image of Spain as dry and parched. With its maritime climate and vast untamed ocean, Galicia is a wilder version of Wales or Brittany. Pine forests and wildflowers cling limpet-like to its rugged headlands; hydrangeas climb drystone village walls.
A decade ago, six Galician friends hatched an idea to create a walking path along its vast sandy beaches, granite cliffs and serene bird-filled estuaries to help others experience their beloved homeland. Their vision: to create a continuous trail linking the ancient whaling port of Malpica with the lighthouse in Finisterre, which as far back as Roman times has been considered “the end of the earth”.
They talked to local fisherman and farmers about hidden paths and started mapping a safe route, which they shared on Facebook, offering group walks along sections of the nascent trail. In 2014, they created a non-profit association whose volunteers began clearing the vegetation and marking the route with lime green circles, arrows and tiny four-toed footprints of the Traski, the Lighthouse Way’s mythical green imp with a labyrinth (the Celtic symbol of Galicia) on his chest and a lighthouse beam on his walking stick.
Cristina Alonso grew up in the Cabo Vilán Lighthouse, near the port town of Camarinas, as the daughter of one of Spain’s first female lighthouse keepers. She’s now the president of the Lighthouse Way Association.
The Cabo Vilán Lighthouse is one of 14 lighthouses along the route (Credit: Basotxerri /Alamy)
“I wanted to explore more of my own backyard and became fascinated with this grassroots social movement,” she said. “The Lighthouse Way is all about immersing people in our remarkable environment with the utmost respect for nature as well as showing our unique culture and history. We’ve built a big family of trasnos, the name we give to all who walk the Lighthouse Way. And with this low-key sustainable tourism model, we’re helping our small communities earn additional income, by offering accommodation and meals and operating taxi services.”
Today, the 200km Lighthouse Way is broken into eight stages, which are described on its website with extensive trail notes accompanied by photos and videos detailing every step. There’s also information on accommodation, restaurants, bars, bakeries and taxis. We walked five stages of the trail and called taxis to take us to our nightly accommodation, which included everything from seaside inns to rustic auberges.
Fog carpeted the coastline when we set out from the trail-side As Garzas inn on the outskirts of Malpica, named after the herons that frequent the islands off shore. The night before we’d savoured white asparagus, clam ravioli and sea bass with turnip greens alongside a flinty Galician albariño white wine as a taste of the journey ahead.
We weaved around boulders that have been wind-whipped into the shapes of eagles and bears and swirling genies as we climbed high over the first of many headlands. Eventually, we reached Nariga Lighthouse, its base resembling the prow of a ship. Later, fragrant needles cushioned our feet as we walked through an alley of pines cowered by the wind. Around the next bend, we discovered a protected cove, its emerald water as calm as a bird bath.
The route is marked with green circles, arrows and the footprints of the Traski (Credit: Susan Gough Henly)
As we followed each green marker, it felt like our trasnos friends were leading us along, showing us their special places, inviting us into their world.
We scaled Monte Branco, the highest rampant dune in Europe, to watch foamy waves rolling across the scalloped coves of Trece Beach. I swam in a translucent sea. At the nearby English cemetery, the graves of 172 sailors from an 1890 shipwreck told another story, inciting a British journalist to first give the Costa da Morte its morbid name.
We walked along Reira Beach, framed by pink-granite boulders and fissured headlands, and, at the top of the hill, we saw the Cabo Vilan Lighthouse, hurriedly built as Spain’s first electric lighthouse in 1896 to prevent more tragedies. The cries of kittiwakes and guillemots soared on the thermals that also power nearby wind turbines, which are ever-present 21st-Century sentinels alongside these time-worn paths. Past fields of gorse and heather that smothered ancient drystone walls, we arrived at the Virgin of the Mount chapel where, it’s said, fishermen’s wives used to climb to the roof to change the position of the tiles in the belief this would alter the wind direction and bring their husbands home. Centuries of enduring, cajoling and now harnessing the wind were laid out before us like a picture book.
Arriving in the sheltered fishing port of Camarinas, we devoured razor clams and skate stew at O Meu Lar, its owner one of the passionate local trasnos who welcomes walkers from all over the world. A day later, as howling wind and rain battered the headland in Muxia, we discovered A Ferida, a jagged granite sculpture honouring the volunteers who came from across the planet to clean this fragile coastline after an oil tanker spill in 2002 caused one of the worst ecological disasters in Spanish history.
Away from the coast, hikers will pass the remains of an Iron Age hill fort (Credit: Susan Gough Henly)
Most of the Lighthouse Way hugs the coast, but sometimes we headed inland to walk beside sinuous estuaries where locals harvested clams, and through hamlets dotted with Galicia’sgranite horreo (granaries) on toadstool-like stone stilts. After climbing through eucalypt forests (a 19th-Century Galician missionary brought seeds back from Australia), we wandered around the foundations of round stone houses at an Iron Age hill fort. Nearby, we explored the mysterious Dolmen de Dombate, a megalithic tomb from 4000 BCE. Another day, we walked past ancient stone mills along a shady stream, lush with ferns and calla lilies, overhanging willows and fig trees.
Each step of the way, as I breathed cool, clean sea air deep into my lungs and listened towaves clashing against rocks and spring water gurgling from inside the Earth, my mind was stilled. I wasn’t looking for any grand revelations, but I don’t recollect the last time I felt so completely in the moment, filled with awe at the vast blue horizon, the sculpted rocks, the tranquil coves and the intricate patterns of wildflower petals, butterfly wings and snail shells.
The final stage ended with a cymbal clash of one gobsmacking beach after another, each framed by muscular headlands. Our boots squeaked along Nemina’s wild surf beach, the wide sweep of Playa de Rostro and the protected wedge of Playa de Arnela, where I swam in turquoise waters one last time. Then, we scrambled up a steep path littered with gorse and sea thrift flowers as the sea currents swirled far below. Golden grasses lined our way along narrow ridges all the way to Mar de Fora Beach behind the fishing village of Fisterra.
The Lighthouse Way ends at the Finisterre Lighthouse, where hikers can stay at the Hotel Semaphoro (Credit: Susan Gough Henly)
One last passage through tall fern glades. One more hill dotted with honeysuckle and daisies as we climbed Monte do Facho to peer down, finally, on the Finisterre Lighthouse and the end of the Lighthouse Way. Celtic druids celebrated rituals here at an altar dedicated to the sun long before Saint James was born. We saw a stream of pilgrims on the spur of the Camino de Santiago walking beside the busy road and past souvenir shops to the rocky tip. For us, we wished the path could go on forever.
We headed, instead, to the Hotel Semaphoro, a whimsical conversion of one of the lighthouse buildings. Here in the tower, as the sun sank into the horizon, we celebrated the journey with an albariño born of granite soils and briny gooseneck barnacles and octopus from the wild ocean below. Then we bedded down for the night, the quiet pulsing of the of the light offering a comforting rhythm to our dreams right here on the edge of the earth.
Slowcomotion is a BBC Travel series that celebrates slow, self-propelled travel and invites readers to get outside and reconnect with the world in a safe and sustainable way.
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