Galicia Road Trip: Faro Touriñán (Muxía) and Cementerio de los Ingleses (Camariñas)

This is a continuing series of photographs from our Galicia Road Trip (with a few stops in Asturias) this past August.

In this post, we arrive in Muxía, a scenic fishing town located on the rugged Costa da Morte, about an hour’s drive NW from our last stop, Noia, where we visited the breathtaking Castro de Baroña. And as I stated in my last post, hotel availability was pretty limited due to the time of year and our last minute planning, but we managed to reserve a room for two nights at Casa Ceferinos, a 1900s family manor transformed into a charming 10-bedroom hotel. Rural, very rural. But rural was what we were looking for on this trip.
 

 
And the location was also ideal for our next few stops. First, a 25 minute drive south to catch a sunset at Faro de Fisterra, a lighthouse that has been visited by thousands of people since its construction in 1853. And because it is located in Cape Finisterre, known worldwide for being the “end of the world” (Fisterra in Gallego means “Land’s End”), it’s also the most famous lighthouse in Galicia.
 

 
The following day, our plans were to explore the town of Muxía with a walk along its coastal promenade, then drive 45 minutes north to the port town of Camariñas to visit the Cementerio de los Ingleses, a point of historical interest located off the Costa da Morte (Coast of Death) related to one of the worst naval accidents involving the British Navy. Then return to our hotel to get some rest before driving 20 minutes north the following evening to catch another sunset at the Santuario da Virxe da Barca (Sanctuary of the Virgin of the Boat), a 17th-century Baroque church in Muxía. When the sun begins to set around 9:30pm in Galicia, there’s a lot you could fit into a day.
 

 
However, when we asked the proprietors of Casa Ceferinos (both born and bred Gallegos) what the best route to the Faro de Fisterra was, we were told that the better sunset was over at Faro Touriñán, a mere 12 minute drive NW of the hotel. They went on to tell us that while Cape Finisterre is famously known as the “end of the world” and the traditional end of the Camino de Santiago, Cabo Touriñán actually extends further west, marking the true, rugged, and rocky westernmost tip of the Spanish mainland.
 
Who were we to argue with locals? So we changed up the plan and headed for Faro Touriñán. And we’re glad we did.

Faro Touriñán

I don’t know what the sunset is like at Faro de Fisterra, I’m sure it’s lovely and that we’ll one day witness it when we return to Galicia. But what a sunset (our first in Galicia!) we beheld at Faro Touriñán. Anywhere else in the world, to see a sunset so remarkable, you’d have hundreds of people gathered around the lighthouse. Not here. A mere smattering of people, nothing more. Yes, it was windy and chilly (despite it being early August) but so worth it.
 

 
We were quickly realizing that Galicia, unlike most of the rest of Spain (and save for pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela), is still in its infancy when it comes to tourism. This would be a recurring theme of our Galicia road trip. Lucky us.
 

 
Photographs don’t really tell the story so here’s a short video made by my better half, Dan Perez Films

Cementerio de los Ingleses

The coastline of Camariñas is one of the most extensive, unspoiled areas of interest on the Galician coast. Part of its coastline is the Costa da Morte (Coast of Death), which stretches over tens of kilometers along the north-western coast of Galicia within the province of A Coruña. The Costa da Morte received its name because there have been so many shipwrecks along its treacherous rocky shore. It is on this shore that you’ll find the Cementerio de los Ingleses (English Cemetery).
 

The origin of this cemetery(*) dates back to the shipwreck of the British ship “HMS The Serpent”, on November 10th, 1890, from which only three of the 175 crew members survived. The priest and the residents of Xaviña, a nearby village, came to rescue the castaways, but all they could do was host the survivors and bury the corpses they recovered there. In gratitude to the community of Camariñas for their assistance, the Lord Commissioner of the British Admiralty presented the parish priest of Xaviña with a shotgun (strange, I know), the mayor with a gold watch, and the town with a barometer.
 

28 crewmembers of “The Iris Hull” are also buried in the cemetery. This was another British ship shipwrecked on November 3rd, 1883, seven years and seven days before the wreck of the Serpent. Today, the site known as the English Cemetery is included in the European Cultural Route of the European Route of Significant Cemeteries.

 
You would think that a place called the “Coast of Death” would look something like the Elephant Graveyard from “The Lion King” but as you can see clearly see in the gallery below, it’s breathtaking. And that would be a recurring theme every time we visited the Galician coast – breathtaking and, more importantly, as yet unspoiled by an overabundance of tourism. Enjoy the gallery…

My next post keeps us in Muxía and features yet another spectacular sunset, this one at the Santuario da Virxe da Barca.
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Photographs are great but the beauty of Galicia can’t be properly illustrated without the moving image, so head on over to my video production site to watch a wonderful recap video from our trip that’s guaranteed to take your breath away.All photographs were taken with (mostly) the Sony a7RV and the Xiaomi Ultra 13 camera phone (could you tell which ones?)For more information about visiting Galicia, visit the official tourism website