See the chamber and passage of the dolmen and look for the paint on the slabs

Work out how old it is — raised in the first half of the fourth millennium BC

Find out why Murguía's 'Celtic monument' was wrong by thousands of years

Walk round the Castro de Borneiro, an Iron Age hillfort with unusually large round houses

Dombate, in Cabana de Bergantiños, is one of the most important and best-preserved dolmens in north-west Iberia, and guidebooks call it the cathedral of Galician megalithism. It was raised in the first half of the fourth millennium BC and used from about 3800 to 2700 BC, and every slab of the chamber and the passage carries paint. In the 19th century the historian Manuel Murguía took it for a Celtic monument, which it is not, and in 1885 the poet Eduardo Pondal put it in a poem. A few kilometres away, the Castro de Borneiro was lived in from the fourth to the first century BC.

The Dombate Dolmen: The Cathedral of Galician Megaliths

Walk between the fishing harbour and the Arena Mayor beach on either side of the peninsula

Look out to the Sisargas and their colonies of gulls and cormorants

Find out how a Galician port came to hunt whales with Basque crews in the 1600s

Find out why the Sisargas lighthouse of 1853 is one of the oldest on the Costa da Morte

Malpica sits on a small peninsula with its fishing harbour on one side and the Arena Mayor beach on the other. In the early 17th century its living was whaling, done with Cantabrian and Basque crews, and after that it fished inshore for the canning and salting factories. Offshore lie the Sisargas, three small islands covering 0.76 square kilometres, a refuge for seabirds — gulls and cormorants — and a special protection area for birds, with a lighthouse built in 1853, one of the oldest on the Costa da Morte.

Malpica: The Whaling Port and the Sisargas

Walk out to the Virxe da Barca sanctuary at Muxía and find the rocks said to be the stone boat, the Pedra de Abalar among them

Find A Ferida, the sculpture for the Prestige oil spill of 2002

Drive out to the Cabo Vilán lighthouse, the oldest electric lighthouse in Spain, first lit in January 1896

Walk to the English Cemetery where the crew of HMS Serpent are buried

Watch the bobbin-lace makers in Camariñas

At Muxía the sanctuary of the Virxe da Barca stands on the rocks at the edge of the sea, where legend says the Virgin came in a stone boat to comfort Saint James and left its pieces as the strangely shaped rocks in front of the church — the Pedra de Abalar among them. The present church dates from 1716–19, pilgrims have long extended the Camino to it, and a fire on Christmas Day 2013 destroyed its baroque altarpiece. Nearby stands A Ferida, the wound, a sculpture for the Prestige oil spill of 2002. North, past Camariñas — known internationally for its bobbin lace — the Cabo Vilán lighthouse was first lit on 15 January 1896, the oldest electric lighthouse in Spain. On 10 November 1890 the Royal Navy's HMS Serpent ran aground on the cape in a storm; 173 of her 176 crew died, and they are buried where they washed ashore, in the English Cemetery.

Muxía and Camariñas: The Stone Boat, the Lace and the Serpent

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

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 out to the lighthouse of 1853 at the tip of the cape and find out why its foghorn was called the cow

Watch the sun go down into the Atlantic from the end of the Roman world

Climb Monte Facho, where tradition puts the Ara Solis, an altar to the sun

See the Christ with the golden beard in Santa María das Areas, where pilgrims finishing the Camino still stop

Find out what pilgrims traditionally do when they reach the cape — the clothes, the sea and the shell

Cape Finisterre was the end of the known world to the Romans, and tradition says they found an altar to the sun, the Ara Solis, on Monte Facho above it. It is also where many pilgrims carry on to after reaching Santiago. In the church of Santa María das Areas is the Santo Cristo de Fisterra, the Christ with the golden beard, and the pilgrims' customs at the cape are old: burn your clothes, bathe in the sea, take a scallop shell home. A pilgrims' hospital stood in front of the church from 1469. The lighthouse on the cape was built in 1853, and because of the winter fog a foghorn was added in 1888 — the Vaca de Fisterra, the cow of Fisterra.

Fisterra: The End of the Earth and the End of the Camino

Walk the last 100km of the Camino Francés from Sarria to Santiago de Compostela, the minimum distance on foot for the Compostela certificate, and have your credencial stamped at least twice a day

Collect your Compostela at the Pilgrim's Office in Santiago

Enter Santiago Cathedral, begun in 1075 and consecrated in 1211, and see Master Mateo's Pórtico da Gloria, completed in 1188

Look for the Botafumeiro, the 80kg, 1.6m incense burner that swings from the cathedral's transept crossing

Stay a night in a pilgrim albergue on the route

Somebody found a tomb in a Galician field at the start of the 9th century and decided it held the apostle James. Within a century people were walking across Europe to it, and they have not stopped since — the Camino is a whole network of routes converging on one cathedral in the far north-west corner of Spain. The cathedral was begun in 1075 and consecrated in 1211, and Master Mateo finished the Pórtico da Gloria over its west door in 1188: a Romanesque portal of two hundred figures that is one of the great pieces of medieval sculpture anywhere.