Faro de Ons

The walk up to the Faro de Ons is the island's best single excursion, following the spine of the island northward through low heather and gorse until the white tower appears above the cliff edge. On clear days the view stretches south to the Cíes Islands and north along the Galician coast; in mist, which is frequent, the lighthouse earns its existence in a more immediate way.

The clifftop around the lighthouse is dramatic and largely unfenced — the kind of place that has been quietly removed from tourist itineraries elsewhere but survives here because the island as a whole has no appetite for the infrastructure of mass tourism. Take care in wind, which on this exposed headland can arrive sideways without much warning.

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The lighthouse stands at the island's highest point, 128 metres above the Atlantic, and was once described by the Spanish maritime authority as one of the most powerful in the country. Built in the mid-nineteenth century and automated long since, it still flashes out across the shipping lanes of the Ría de Pontevedra — the same stretch of water where Spanish galleons returning from the Americas made their final approach to Vigo and Pontevedra.

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