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

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

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 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

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

Stand at the foot of the falls where the Xallas pours into the sea

Climb Monte Pindo through the granite boulders to A Moa, the summit

Find out why the mountain is called the Celtic Olympus

Find the 1724 account that described the falls as a plume of smoke seen from out at sea

At Ézaro the river Xallas drops 155 metres in its last stretch and ends in a 40-metre fall at the foot of Monte Pindo, straight into the salt water of the bay. A document of 1724 describes it as a great plume of smoke that could be seen from several kilometres out to sea. Above it, Monte Pindo rises to 627 metres, a mass of granite boulders so strange that it has gathered legends of gods, giants and monsters and the name the Celtic Olympus. With Carnota beach it forms a Natura 2000 site.

Ézaro and Monte Pindo: A River Falling Into the Sea

Find the Torre de los Moreno of 1915 and work out what an indiano was

Walk the Eo estuary, which with the Oscos hills behind it is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve

Cross the Eo bridge and work out that the far side is Asturias

Go up to Santa Cruz above the town for the view over the estuary and the coast

Work out what emigration to Latin America did to towns along this coast, and what it built when it came back

Ribadeo sits at the mouth of the Eo, which is the border with Asturias, and the Eo estuary with the Oscos hills behind it is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. The town made money from emigration to Latin America and came back in the form of indianos — returning emigrants who built showy houses, of which the Torre de los Moreno of 1915 is the extravagant example. The Eo bridge is a kilometre and a half of motorway over the estuary. Praia das Catedrais is ten kilometres west.

Ribadeo and the Mariña Lucense

Stand in front of the cathedral, begun in 1219, and work out why it is nicknamed the kneeling one

Find the Gothic paintings in the nave under the organs, including the Slaughter of the Innocents

Find out who Álvaro Cunqueiro was and read something of his set in a version of this town

Eat tarta de Mondoñedo, which the town has made for generations

Walk the old quarter and work out what a Galician capital looked like before it stopped being one

Mondoñedo was one of the seven capitals of the Kingdom of Galicia and a bishop's seat, and then the world moved and it did not. What is left is a small town with a cathedral out of all proportion to it, begun in 1219 and well advanced by 1246 — Romanesque with Gothic transept, sacristy and a five-metre rose window of the 14th century in the west front. It is nicknamed the kneeling cathedral for its perfect proportions and low height. Álvaro Cunqueiro, one of the great Galician writers of the 20th century, was born here and set much of his work in a version of this town. The local sweet is the tarta de Mondoñedo.