The mist and rain has gone and it's a bright morning. The town looks very different in the sunshine; the river is bright blue, the white church is brighter and the castle walls stand out against the sky. Behind the town there are tall rocks with trees and mimosa, and a statue of a deer at the peak. We use the service point in the aire then set off at 11:20.

We find our last Portuguese Lidl in a town called Valenca and stock up the wine at €1.50 a bottle. Immediately out of Valenca. We cross a narrow iron-lattice bridge, the other end of which is the Spanish border at Tui. A few miles on we stop for lunch put our clocks on one hour [so it will be lighter this evening] then join the motorway to take us to A Coruna.

It is a pretty drive in the sunshine, with lots of very green scenery. We drive high over Vigo, a city we visited twice from the sea, with the estuary blue below us. After Vigo we see many of the small grain stores particular to this area. They are about the size of a van, but made of stone with pitched stone rooves and set up on stone mushrooms called straddles. They almost look like miniature chapels as some have crosses for finials. A lot of the countryside is similar to England; green fields and stone farm houses.

We reach A Coruna [or La Coruna] and start through the tea-time traffic, but our route to the stopover is not straightforward. We make a small mistake, Snoopy the satnav recalculates and we end up in a pedestrian-priority zone with narrow streets. Then we reach the T-junction of a one way street and with cars parked on both sides. Hang on Snoopy! We cannot make the turn in one go, so Ali gets out and points this way and that, while Nick ignores all around and focuses on her directions, [all the time with the 'what a stupid Englishman' look]. A few minutes and a couple of back and forwards and we are through with, literally, an inch on one side and three on the other. Nick W follows with a similar manoeuvre then we pull in to let all the patient locals go by, with not a single toot or gesture.

Eventually we get to the stop, a mixed car park beneath the Tower of Hercules and its lighthouse. It is perambulation hour and all the joggers and dog-walkers and couples are out pounding the pavements and parks.

We join them and climb the long slope up to the lighthouse, first built by the Romans in 1AD. Behind us is the almost-full moon rising, beside and below us huge waves crash over the rocks covering them in creamy foam, and in front of us is the setting sun. It is a truly spectacular scene.

There is football in the nearby stadium and they are still playing when we turn in at mid-night.