An early finish to my Camino gave me a day spare to venture north to A Coruña and visit the windiest WHS so far.

The lighthouse is quite impressive and can be seen from a fair distance away back on the Western beach in A Coruña. It is a very fine looking tower, but it is not really that 'Roman' and has not even been continually used as Lighthouse for the entirety of its life. However there are some Roman remains buried underneath it and I got a view of these when I went inside. They were about as interesting as a selection of dimly lit rocks can be. There were repairs going on to the Tower so I wasn't able to climb it. I then headed on out to see the surrounding additions to the inscription on the peninsula. It was a little bit of a way to get to the furthest points so I took the opportunity to hire a Segway (second time at a WHS this year) and head of to the extremities. This proved to be a very enjoyable way of getting to see some of the abstract sculptures and the small Muslim cemetery. Quite what these have to do with the lighthouse I am not sure, however it does mean that this rather lovely part of the coastline is left free of development, and I found it an exceptionally rewarding place to be blown around by the increasingly strong winds.

If you ever really want to see how to make an application to get inscribed on the World Heritage list then I would recommend spending a bit of time looking at the application for this site. It manages to tick every box, include seemingly non related things in the inscription and make rather large claims about the anti-seismic construction methods. However this aside, it does do a good job of illustrating how the Romans set up a navigational site here for when they turned their attention to the Atlantic as well as the Mediterranean sea routes. Despite my slightly dismissive comments here, I do think there is a fair bit of worth in the site's inscription, and the inclusion of the remaining parts of peninsular although seeming unrelated actually helps preserve the locale.

A Coruña itself was a pretty nice city, with a walled old town and a fine city beach, although the train station is a long way from the city centre and the Tower is even further still. After a pretty long walk to the beach I managed to hop on a charming old tram that does a loop of the isthmus on which the city is situated; this dropped me off right at the access to the tower.

I actually really enjoyed my trip to this site. It is perhaps not the most impressive WHS but it does help to illustrate how navigation has been continually improved on the European Atlantic coast. Worthy of a stop if you want to blow away a few cobwebs for an hour or two.

[Rating: Site 3, Experience 6]