Crossing into Galicia, the train reaches Ribadeo and the celebrated Playa de las Catedrales (Beach of the Cathedrals). At low tide the sea retreats to reveal a gallery of natural arches and buttresses up to thirty metres high — corridors of rock you can walk beneath, named for their resemblance to a Gothic cathedral.
Timing is everything: the beach can only be explored on foot at low tide, which the journey is planned around. It is one of the most photographed natural sites in Spain, and one of the quiet highlights of the whole route.
Into Galicia
From here the landscape softens into the green, estuary-laced country of Galicia — a prelude to the journey's end at Santiago de Compostela.
