The fortress walls at Baiona

Monterreal is a fortified headland at the mouth of the ría, walled since the sixteenth century, with a footpath running the full circuit of the ramparts high above the water. The walk takes about forty minutes at photograph pace and gives a different view every hundred metres: pines and rock on the ocean side, the harbour and the town on the other.

Inside the walls is a parador, but the grounds and the wall walk are open to anyone for a small entrance fee. The best light is late: the west-facing stretch looks straight out at the sunset, and in summer that is close to ten in the evening.

Down in the harbour, the replica of the caravel Pinta is moored — the first ship back from the Americas made landfall here in 1493 — and the old town behind the port is a compact grid of stone streets with a Romanesque collegiate church.

It is a forty-minute drive from Pontevedra and thirty from Vigo. Parking is outside the walls and fills at weekends. Wind on the ocean side is strong and constant, so the sheltered stretch of rampart facing the town is the fallback when the exposed side is unmanageable.