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Driving from Porto to A Coruna-Help Narrowing Down Our Route

Posted by (Seattle, WA, US) on

Hi all! Deep into our planning for our week in Spain after a Douro River cruise. Short version, driving from Porto to A Coruna, staying 3 nights. Then drive back down to Santiago de Compostela for 4 nights. In A Coruna, will do a drive along the coast and areas east one day, explore A Coruna and surroundings another. Plan to drive along the Costa da Morte for a bit for our drive to SDC. SDC itinerary is explore city one day, head west to Rias Baixas area one day (not sure exactly where yet), and east to Lugo area one day. Anyways, wanted to share that as context for below.

Looking at the drive from OPO airport (where we pick up the car) to A Coruna looks pretty straightforward. Head up and cross the border at Tui and then take the AP-9 the rest of the way. Google says should take about 3 hours. Open to adding a detour or stop or two along the way, so hoping you can help provide some ideas. Some thoughts I've had.....
-Detour over to A Guarda area to view the Celtic ruins there.
-Stop in Vigo or Pontevedra for a couple of hours. This could influence where we go on our day trip out to Rias Baixas too. Still need to work on that part of the trip.

-Other thoughts along the route?

Thanks for your help with this! Don't want to turn this necessarily into an 10 hour drive, but spending a few extra hours along the way instead of just blazing through the countryside would be awesome.

Posted by
8611 posts

Driving from Tui to Castro Santa Trega only takes 30 minutes. There is a small admission fee to get up to the site, but it’s worth it. When we were last there in 2023, after seeing the Celtic ruins and overlook, we continued up the coast road to Baiona. Whether you take the coastal road or more direct route, both routes merge by Vigo, south of Santiago de Compostela (SDC).

Lugo is worth probably a half day. Walking around the town on the Roman wall takes about 25 minutes. If you like old chapels, the small 15th century Church of San Salvador in Vilar de Donas is worth a short stop. The village, if it can even be called that, is between SDC and Lugo.

You could save some backtracking by visiting Lugo on the way back to SDC from A Coruña.

To avoid the tolls of the AP-9, you could take the A-55 to the N-550. The N-550 parallels the highway, but will be a more scenic drive. It will take longer because it is only 2 lanes.

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