Praia de Melide

Praia de Melide lies at the northern end of the island, about an hour's walk from the ferry pier at Area dos Cans. The path there follows the eastern coast, which faces the sheltered waters of the Ría de Pontevedra — calmer, warmer, and sunnier than the exposed Atlantic side to the west.

The beach itself is wide enough to absorb a crowd without feeling crowded, the sand is fine and clean, and the water is clear enough to see the bottom in the shallows. There are no facilities, so bring whatever you need. The return walk can be varied by cutting inland over the ridge and coming back along the western cliff path, which adds another thirty minutes but adds the lighthouse and the cliff views.

beaches sight
A story
Melide is the beach Galicians point to when they want to argue that the region's Atlantic coast can match anything in the Mediterranean — a wide crescent of pale sand backed by low dunes, with no road, no bar, and no development of any kind visible from the waterline. Because Ons sits inside a national park with a hard visitor cap, even at the height of summer the density of people per metre of beach remains at a level that has long since become impossible to find on the Galician mainland.