Trevor Huxham

Castro de Baroña Apart from the Roman walls of Lugo and the refurbished Tower of Hercules in A Coruña , Galicia doesn’t have much going for it in terms of ancient ruins. However, you can still catch a fleeting glimpse of its long-lost Celtic heritage in ruins scattered across the region, like a hilltop perch in A Guarda that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. These castros  or pre-Roman fortifications consisting of circular stone huts were built all over Galicia and even lasted throughout Roman times. Fishing on the beach While on a weekend trip to coastal Ribeira , about an hour or so west of Santiago de Compostela , I daytripped with a friend of a friend, who drove me around the area and gave me the chance to experience the wonders that the peninsula called O Barbanza has to offer, like mobile sand dunes and even a dolmen (prehistoric megalithic burial mound). On the northern coast of this mountainous peninsula, we stopped off for a few minutes to check out the Castro d...

Castro ruins If you chase the western coast of Galicia all the way south to the Portuguese border, you’ll end up at the mouth of the Miño River and the compact fishing village of A Guarda, too. I took a daytrip to this remote corner of northwest Spain while exploring Vigo back in January and really enjoyed this quiet—and historical—taste of coastal Galicia. Castro ruins After a glorious seaside lunch of croquetas  and steamed mussels, I left the city center of A Guarda and began hiking up Mt. Santa Trega. The footpath passed through eucalyptus and pine woods, and even a rainshower. But after a brief, 45-minute climb, I emerged at the summit, the site of some pre-Roman ruins. Called a castro,  these walled, Celtic-era settlements consisted of circular stone huts capped with thatched roofs, and they endured throughout the Roman period. The castro de Santa Trega  is one of the most famous in all Galicia, simply because the archaeological work done over the cen...