Stage Niñóns - Ponteceso

The second day of O Camiño dos Faros comes to 27.1 kilometres between Niñóns and Ponteceso and is reckoned one of the hardest on the route, not so much for the climbing as for the length and the exposure of the terrain. Close to ten hours of walking with stops separate the two villages, following a coast that alternates vertical cliffs, open beaches and dune fields.

The stage leaves Niñóns along the beach and takes on the Costa da Tremosa straight away, a narrow path hung above the Atlantic that offers the finest panoramas of the day. The beaches of Morro, A Barda, Osmo and Ermida follow one another between rocky headlands until the path looks out over cabo Roncudo.

The Roncudo is the heart of the stage. Its lighthouse presides over a string of rocks where the best goose barnacles in Galicia are gathered, a dangerous trade that has left memorial crosses among the crags. The hamlet of Roncudo, its stone houses hunched against the storms, gives way to the harbour of Corme, the largest settlement on this section and a good place to recover strength.

Past Corme the path leaves the open sea and works its way into the ría. It climbs monte da Facha and monte Branco, a promontory of fossil sand that commands the whole river mouth, and then drops to the beach of Río Covo, to Valarés and to the great dune field of A Barra. The last stretch skirts the mouth of the río Anllóns, a marsh frequented by herons, cormorants and wading birds, before entering Ponteceso.

Ponteceso, birthplace of the poet Eduardo Pondal, author of the words of the Galician anthem, closes the stage with the murmur of the Anllóns in the background.