Camiño dos Faros - the world's best coastal walk?

"Walking the Camiño dos Faros", published in 2019, is my 4th Cicerone guide.  This article provides a background to the walk and why I think it stands out as one of the world's greatest coastal walks.

In December 2012 a group of six Galician hikers, friends since childhood, and two dogs decided to walk from Malpica to Fisterra; a 200km journey around the coast of northwest Spain. They wanted to create a route that stayed as close as possible to the sea. Like many Galicians, they love the traditional landscape, culture and way of life and devising the route was their way of inviting others to enjoy it.

The Camiño dos Faros - a walk along the coast of death

There is a lot more to walking in Galica than the Camino de Santiago

I'm just back from a walk along the Camiño dos Faros, or ‘Lighthouse Way’, around Galicia's Costa del Morte (Coast of Death) in northwest Spain. It was a wonderful trip. The scenery was great, the walk well defined, the food fabulous and I met some really nice people. I would definitely recommend this walk although there are a few things you should be aware of.

Camiño Dos Faros Day 5

Today we walked from Muxia to Nemiña, a tough stretch of walking but excellent. The weather was perfect, the scenery was fantastic and we even managed to adopt a Galician guide to show us the way. What more could we ask for?

Nosa Señora de Barca at Muxía

Keen eyed readers will spot that we have missed out a chunk of the Camiño. The original plan involved walking from Camarinas to Muxia yesterday. This was just too far, we were knackered from the previous day and the weather forecast was poor. We decided to have a rest day, got a taxi for most of the way (Praia do Logo) and after a 10km walk ate a late lunch and had a rest. The weather turned out to be OK, Christine even had a swim in the sea (very short), but taking a break was a good move as the last two days are tough.

O Camiño Dos Faros Day 4

Today's walk was huge in every sense of the word, huge scenery, huge distance and hugely knackered at the end.

Ancient fields near Laxe

If you are a regular reader of my blog you will know that my preferred style of walking involves staying in local accommodation as near as possible to the end of each day's walk. Ideally this means a looking to find a hotel or something similar about every 25 kms or so, allowing for around 8 hours walking a day. I try to plan a schedule in advance, and adapt the desirable to the available. When I do this, in order to make things work I am sometimes over optimistic about what is possible. Today was one of those days. We walked 35 hard and difficult kilometres from Laxe to Mourin, a hamlet to the north of Camarinas, arriving after 9 and a half hours with wet sore feet.

O Camiño Dos Faros Day 3

Day 3 on the Camiño Dos Faros and a great day's walking, approaching epic!

Early morning near 

The big change, after yesterday, was the weather. Last night's monsoons were replaced by a dry but fresh sunny day with white puffy clouds racing across an otherwise blue sky. The light was great, clear and crisp, presenting some great scenery in the best possible way.

O Camiño Dos Faros Day 2

One word provides an all too succinct summary of today: 'wet'. It was drizzling as we left our lovely hotel at about 9-30, and raining properly about 30 minutes later. In the day long weather battle between good and evil, good turned up off stage for just a few minutes early afternoon but decided he had better places to go and the rain came down even harder. After sticking with the route until late afternoon we cut our losses at about 4.30, took a big shortcut across the final headland and dropped down into Porto do Corme. Almost impossible to imagine but as we entered what I suspect is a sad little town even in the sunshine the rain took on monsoon proportions. After roaming the deserted streets for about 30mins we found our accommodation, an apartment, and started the not insignificant task of drying ourselves out.

A Dolmen - maybe

O Camiño Dos Faros - Day 1

Just finished an amazing lunch at the end of a great day's walking. Michelin star food and fabulous scenery, yes I'm back in Spain. I'm walking the Camiño Dos Faros, the Lighthouse Way, a 200 km walk around the northwest corner of Spain. The coastline is known as the Costa de Morte, a name given to it by English sailors for sadly obvious reasons. Well we have survived our first 12 km and it's definitely thumbs up, so far so good.

Fishermen at Malpica