Look out at the bateas and work out what is hanging under each one and how long it takes to grow

Go out on a working mussel boat and see a rope hauled

Walk the Carreirón natural park at the south end of the island for the waders and the salt marsh

Eat mussels within sight of the rafts they came off, which is the whole point of being here

Work out the scale of what this ría produces relative to the rest of Europe

A Illa de Arousa is an island in the Ría de Arousa joined to the mainland by a two-kilometre bridge opened in 1985, and the water around it is full of bateas — floating timber rafts with ropes hanging beneath them growing mussels. Galicia produces more rope-grown mussels than anywhere in Europe and this ría produces more than any other part of Galicia. The southern end of the island is the Carreirón natural park, a low headland of salt marsh and pine where waders and wintering wildfowl come in, with beaches on both sides.

A Illa de Arousa and the Mussel Rafts

Visit the Pazo de Fefiñáns, the noble house in Cambados' old town that produces Albariño de Fefiñanes

See the ruins of Santa Mariña Dozo, Cambados's ruined church and cemetery

Eat cockles and clams gathered at low tide in O Serrido on the Ría de Arousa

Taste an Albariño at a bodega in Cambados

Albariño is a thick-skinned white grape that copes with the rain and the salt air of this coast, and the Rías Baixas are where it is grown — on granite posts and pergolas high off the ground so the sea breeze gets under the vines and keeps rot off them. Cambados is the capital of it. The rías themselves are drowned river valleys, the most productive shellfish water in Europe, so the wine and what it is drunk with come out of the same few kilometres of coast.

Cambados: The Capital of Albariño

Walk the boardwalks out to the mobile dune and work out how far it moves in a year

Find the two lagoons and work out that one is salt and one is fresh, and what that does to the birds

Work out why a dune this size is unusual on this coast

Go out to the Corrubedo lighthouse and read what this stretch of coast has done to shipping

Stay off the dune itself and work out from the signs why walking on it is the one thing that destroys it

The dune at Corrubedo is about a kilometre long, up to twenty metres high, and moving — a mobile dune of a size unusual on the Atlantic coast of Iberia, sitting between the sea and two lagoons, Carregal and Vixán, one salt and one fresh. The whole complex is a natural park and a Ramsar site, and the two different lagoons side by side is why the bird list is as long as it is. Behind it the coast runs out to the Corrubedo lighthouse on one of the most dangerous stretches of the Costa da Morte.

Corrubedo: The Biggest Moving Dune in Galicia

Walk the waterfront and count the hórreos standing in a row above the water

Work out how one actually works — raised on legs, capped to stop rats, slatted to let the wind through and dry the grain

Find the cruceiros, the stone crosses the village is equally protected for

Walk the old lanes behind the front, where the houses are built against and into the bare granite

Look out across the Ría de Pontevedra at the rafts moored in it, and work out what is being farmed underneath them

Combarro on the Ría de Pontevedra is protected both as a Historic Ensemble and as a Historic Site, and what it is protected for is a concentration of hórreos and stone crosses unlike anywhere else. The hórreo is a granary raised on legs with flat stone caps to stop rats climbing in and slatted sides to let Atlantic wind dry the maize — a piece of ordinary engineering that Galicia solved once and never needed to change. In Combarro they stand in a line along the waterfront with their backs to the sea.

Combarro: A Village Built Out of Granaries

Cross the isthmus over the ditch cut four metres wide and three deep, the fort's first line of defence

Go through the gate in the main wall and count the round and oval houses — twenty survive

Climb the stone stairs between the two quarters, the best preserved in any Galician castro

Walk out to the tip of the peninsula and look back at the fort from the Atlantic side

Baroña is an Iron Age fort on a rocky peninsula at Porto do Son, lived in from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD. A ditch four metres wide and three deep was cut across the isthmus as the first defence, then came a double wall and the main wall with its gate. Inside, the foundations of twenty round and oval houses survive, and the stone stairs between its two quarters are the best preserved of any Galician castro. Its people lived mainly off the sea, on shellfish and fish, and left traces of metalworking, stone-working and weaving. It was first excavated in 1933.

Castro de Baroña: An Iron Age Fort on a Rock in the Atlantic

Walk the whole historic centre and work out how long it takes before you see a car

Work out what changed: a policy decision about who the streets are for, not a pedestrian zone bolted on

Find the Santuario da Peregrina, the scallop-shaped church on the edge of the old town

Walk out to the Illa das Esculturas in the Lérez, an island of commissioned sculpture

Work out why the French press call it the city where the pedestrian is king, and whether they are right

Pontevedra took cars out of its centre and rebuilt the city round people walking, and the French press named it the city where the pedestrian is king. Traffic deaths in the centre fell to nothing, air quality changed and the historic core — one of the best preserved in Galicia — became usable again rather than a car park. Jean Froissart called it Boa Vila in the 14th century for its position and its prosperity. It is the capital of the Rías Baixas, on the Lérez, and it has a sculpture island in the river.

Pontevedra: The City Where the Pedestrian Is King

Walk the length of the hórreo and count its legs

Drive to Lira and compare it with the rival that is a few centimetres longer

Walk Carnota beach and the marshes behind it

Find out why the village earned the title 'Very Humanitarian' in 1966

Hórreos, the raised stone granaries of Galicia, belong only to the north-west of the Iberian peninsula, and Carnota's is one of the largest there is — almost 35 metres long. It was built in 1768 with 11 pairs of legs and another 11 were added in 1783. The one at Lira nearby beats it by a few centimetres and is in worse repair, which is a local argument. Carnota also has a long beach and marshes at the mouth of the river, and the islands of Lobeiras offshore; in 1966 the village was named 'Very Humanitarian' for rescuing the crew of the Ariete when she ran aground in a storm.

Carnota: A 35-Metre Granary

Find the portrait of Philip V in the Museu de l'Almodí and check which way up it is hanging

Work out why: the town was burned in 1707 and renamed after the man in the picture

Walk the length of the castle along the ridge — it is two castles, the Castell Menor and the Castell Major

Find out which popes came from here, and what the Borja family did next

Find the Gothic Sant Feliu church below the castle, one of the oldest buildings left after the fire

Xàtiva backed the Austrian side in the War of the Spanish Succession, and in 1707 Bourbon troops burned the town in reprisal. Philip V then renamed it San Felipe, after himself; the Cortes of Cádiz gave the old name back in 1811. The town has not forgotten. In its museum hangs a portrait of Philip V, and it hangs upside down. Xàtiva was also the cradle of the Borja popes — Calixtus III and Alexander VI — and the twin castle on the ridge above, praised by al-Idrisi in the 12th century for its beauty and strength, runs along the whole crest.

Xàtiva: The Town Hung Upside Down

Be in Betanzos on the night of 16 to 17 August for the launch — 25 metres of brown paper stuck together with rye paste

Read the sixteen painted panels before it goes up — local artists satirising the year just gone

Go into San Francisco and find the tomb of Fernán Pérez de Andrade, carried by a boar and a bear

Work out what Betanzos was: capital of one of the seven provinces of the old Kingdom of Galicia, and the capital of Galician Gothic

Eat the tortilla, which Betanzos is argued about across Spain for — deliberately undercooked in the middle

Betanzos was capital of one of the seven provinces of the old Kingdom of Galicia, and it keeps one of the best-preserved historic centres in the region — enough that it gets called the capital of Galician Gothic. On the night of 16 to 17 August, for San Roque, the town launches the Globo de Betanzos — an unmanned paper hot-air balloon up to 25 metres tall and 16 across, made of sixteen panels of brown paper stuck together with rye-flour paste and reinforced with cotton tape, each panel painted with a satirical cartoon by a local artist. Claudino Pita Pandelo made the 1875 balloon and every one from 1877 on; his descendants have rebuilt his design every year since, with breaks only for the Civil War and COVID.