The Costa Brava was the first stretch of the Mediterranean to embrace mass tourism, and, boy, does it show. In Lloret de Mar, there are more hotel beds than in the whole of Greece.
Yet travel north beyond Palamos, where the coast road takes a turn inland, and it’s a very different story. Like a lorry that’s taken a bend too fast and shed its load, the landscape tosses aside unsightly development: high-rise hotels sink to their knees and farmland and forest recapture ground lost to concrete and tarmac. On the coast here, you’ll find fishing villages, craggy coves and fragrant headlands dipping into a sparkling sea. Nowhere in Spain can match it for scenery.
Of course, there are tourists -this is the Med -but most of them come from other parts of Spain. (One of the few UK tour operators to feature the area has a letter from a dissatisfied client complaining that she was “shocked to find myself surrounded by Spanish for-eigners”.) On this northern stretch, the landscape has tended to repel developers -the only way you can actually reach the coast is to follow one of the spider-leg roads that lead down from the hill towns, dead-ending at the sea. Here is our complete south-to-north guide to the Rugged Coast’s wilder side.
CALELLA DE PALAFRUGELL
A very nice place to start. Calella de Palafrugell is small, simple and Spanish - not the
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set of S words that define most of the Costas. It has squinting-white, almost Andalusian architecture and two sandy beaches -Blue Flag clean and bordered by a prom and a line of arcaded passageways.
One of the beaches has a sailing school, Club Vela Calella (00 34-972 614619), which specialises in two-week courses for children (about Pounds 100 for a total of 20 hours’ teaching). On the next headland, you’ll find the Cap Roig botanic garden, created in the 1920s by a tsarist Russian colonel and his English wife.
Reaching down to the sea in a series of terraces, it hosts a summer arts festival (mid-July to mid-August; 902 447755, www.caixagirona.es).
The Tragamar (972 615189) is one of several good places to eat beside the sea, which is where most of its dishes originate; main courses Pounds 12.
LLAFRANC
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A stunning 15-minute walk along the old coastguards’ cliff path from Calella brings you to Llafranc -you can stay in either village and sunbathe in both with ease. Here, you’ll find a more conventional seaside, defined by a coarse-sand beach -one of the best in the area -backed by a pine-shaded boulevard. There’s a line of pavement tables, belonging to bars, restaurants and cafes, where you won’t be able to get a decent cup of tea -a sure sign that you’ve found the “authentic” Med.
Llafranc is animated but never agitated, modern and old-fashioned at the same time, more like a dwarf clone of early Biarritz than a Spanish resort.
El Far (972 301639, www.elfar.net), next to the lighthouse above town, is Llafranc’s best restaurant (main courses about Pounds 25) and has nine elegant rooms set in the original 17th-century hermitage; doubles from Pounds 143, B&B.
TAMARIU
Tamariu wraps itself around its half-circle bay, with sheltered swimming in well-protected waters, a beach of mostly fine pebbles and a string of taverna like restaurants on the quayside. All very much like a Greek island, but with much better food.
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You could walk to Tamariu from Llafranc in less than two hours, up and over the El Far headland. To drive there, however, you have to go back to Palafrugell and pick up a spur road to the village.
AIGUABLAVA
The setting here -a sunset-pink rocky inlet where little boats ride on Smartie-coloured buoys against an amphitheatre of green hills -is Medi- terranean perfection. But Aigua-blava also has a pair of tiny near-neighbours. Sa Tuna and Sa Riera, reached by corkscrew roads from Begur, are both the sort of places that impel painters to set up their easels.
A mile or so to the north is Pals, best known for its golf course (there are several other layouts in the area) and a hideous set of red-and-white radio masts that detract from the otherwise magnificent sands. The local tourist office assured me that these “sticks” are scheduled for demolition, but I was told the same thing seven years ago.
On the opposite claw of headland is a parador: a design horror, but well worth a trip to its terrace for a drink (and the only view of the bay without the parador).
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BEGUR
This medieval market town, topped by the shell of its fortress, which has its origins in the 10th century, is a hub for several villas, most owned by Catalans, but nearly all avail-able for rent (see Travel brief, below). The countryside is delightful - a mix of woods, orchards, olive groves and farms dotted with golden-stone hill towns and villages.
Essential visits include stage-set Peratallada and La Bisbal, famed for its ceramics. Both are within easy reach.
Back in Begur, you’ll find top tapas at Blau de Begur (972 622432; about Pounds 10 a head).
THE BAY OF ROSES
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If you can’t swallow the idea of the Med without a big, sandy sweep of beach, you won’t be disappointed by the Bay of Roses. There is several miles’worth of sand, but there is a downside -the resorts, including Roses itself, in the northern arm of the bay, and L’Estartit, to the south, are both dominated by big hotels with accompanying waterparks, go-kart tracks, nightclubs and the like.
It’s not what this stretch of the Costa Brava does best -though, from L’Estartit, divers can take off on trips to the seven Medes islands, a marine reserve that offers some of the best diving in Spain (visit www.poseidon-online.com).
Nearby, however, are two premier-league attractions (or three if you’re a foodie). First stop, the Greco-Roman ruins of Empuries (admission Pounds 2; 972 770208), where an audio tour (an extra Pounds 2.50) helps you to decipher both the excavated Greek city and the still-being-excavated Roman one - its wonderful black-and-white mosaics are already on show.
Get there before it starts to bake (it opens at 10am), then hit the beach right outside the back gate. There is also a paved walkway leading to the resort of L’Escala, with an attractive old heart but some rather bland sprawl. In the other direction lies Sant Marti, a walled medieval village, where you could do a lot worse than swim from the pine-shaded beach and have lunch at Meson del Conde (972 770306, www.mesondelconde.com; main courses Pounds 11).
A short drive north brings you to the marshland bird reserve at Aiguamolls (972 454222, www.parcsdecatalunya.net). Admission is free, and you can hire binoculars for spotting some of the 300 species, including marsh harriers, kingfishers, herons, rollers and cuckoos -even the occasional flamingo. Spring is prime time here, when resident numbers are swollen by migrating birds waiting for a lull in the northerly wind, which keeps them from tackling the Pyrenees.
Tucked away in the bare hills above Roses is El Bulli (972 150457, www.elbulli.com), arguably the best rest-aurant in Spain, where three-star Michelin man Ferran Adria creates his multicourse “molecular gastronomy” -book now for 2006. For a table sooner, try El Moli de L’Escala (972 774727), closer to Roses.
CADAQUES
The Costa Brava’s last northern outburst of knobbly coastline, where the final folds of the Pyrenees topple into the sea, is Salvador Dali country. The white fishing village of Cadaques, where he spent most of his life, looks more like Mykonos cast adrift from an Aegean mooring. It’s no longer the Spanish St Trop, the chic boho enclave it was in the 1960s, when a stack of artists and celebrities came to pay their respects to the surrealist master. But the narrow cobbled lanes leading down from the church, with their boutiques and galleries, more than justify the serpentine approach. The stony beach is grey-grim and not worth considering.
Dali, prankster of the palette, lived just round the corner in Port Lligat, reachable aboard the very boat he gave to his beloved Gala (ask locally for departure times; about Pounds 6 each way). His house -or rather the string of fishermen’s cottages he acquired over a period of years -is now a museum, but you can only visit on a pre-booked tour (admission Pounds 5; 972 251015, www.salvador-dali.org). The property is a magpie’s nest of objects, including a bear with a necklace and three stuffed swans -outnumbering by one the Dali paintings.
It would be a pity to visit Cadaques and ignore the rest of the Cap de Creus peninsula, which inspired many of Dali’s works. It’s a remarkable landscape, its once-terraced contours now utterly barren. You can drive the dead-end route to the lighthouse, then follow a narrow road of breathless views to the vast 11th-century monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes. Continue up and over the top, then wind down to Port de la Selva, a working fishing village.
For more of the moustachioed master, head inland to Figueres, his birthplace.
Beneath a roof of giant white eggs stands the Dali Theatre-Museum (972 677500, www.salvador-dali.org), the most visited museum in Spain after the Prado. It has a richly comic collection of Dali’s works, including the Mae West room, with its pink-lips sofa, and the Rainy Cadillac.
The third point of the Dali triangle is Gala’s Castle, in the medieval village of Pubol (972 488655), with much Dali decor. He moved in after Gala died and remained there until his own death in 1989.
Els Pescadors (972 258859; mains Pounds 11), also in the village, is good for alfresco seafood, but have your coffee on the seafront in the old Casino -which in this case means a social club, not a gambl- ing den.
Travel brief
Getting there: the best gateway airport to the region is Gerona. Ryanair (0906 270 5656, 25p per minute; www. ryanair.com) flies there from Blackpool, Bournemouth, Glasgow, Liverpool, Luton, Nottingham and Stansted, with returns from about Pounds 80 in July. It also flies from Shannon and Dublin; from E328.
Barcelona is about 35 miles to the southwest. Airlines that fly there include EasyJet (0905 821 0905, 65p per minute; www.easyjet.com), from Bristol, Gatwick, Liverpool, Luton, Newcastle and Stansted, with returns from about Pounds 80 in July; Jet2 (0871 226 1737, www.jet2.com), from Belfast and Leeds/Bradford, from Pounds 137; Monarch Scheduled (0870 040 5040, www.flymonarch.com), from Manchester, from about Pounds 85; FlyGlobespan (0870 556 1522, www.flyglobespan.com), from Edinburgh and Glasgow, from about Pounds 185; British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com) from Birmingham and Heathrow, from about Pounds 120; and Aer Lingus (0818 365000, www.aerlingus.com), from Dublin and Cork, from E253.
Alternatively, there are charter flights to Gerona from 10 UK airports, which offer especially good value for last-minute departures. For example, the Charter Flight Centre (0845 045 0153, www.charterflights.co.uk) has flights from Birmingham, Gatwick and Nottingham, with July fares starting at Pounds 59. Or try Flightline (0800 541541, www.flightline.co.uk), or Flights Direct (0871 226 2674, www.flightsdirect.com).