A few days in l'Ametlla

We've booked four nights in l'Ametlla, time just to slow-up a bit. The place is more a small fishing port rather than a resort, in many ways an ordinary working town. That being said, nowhere here is untouched by mass tourism. Just up the road, to the north, is the large 'urbanisation' of Tres Calas - a sprawling estate of villas with pools. We rented one a few years ago, and very pleasant it was too! There is one large multi storey 'fun in the sun' style hotel on the road out towards the campsite. The area  has weedy pavements, headless streetlamps and other evidence that other large urbanisations had been planned, but not completed, probably stymied by the banking crisis.

Consequently, the coast beside the campsite still looks like this and parts of it have been protected as a nature reserve, so maybe it won't be all concreted over.

We headed into to town by bike, about 3 kilometres, failed to find a supermarket, but found the market hall instead.

The tomatoes looked great, but in fact were not that good, the sad fact is that often supermarket quality control systems ensure consistent quality, whereas local traders are more varied.

Then we headed for a small cove just around the small promontory by the campsite. Yesterday I managed a brief swim, its amazing the water is still warm so late in the season - will I manage a November swim I wonder, that would be a first.

Action shot of  Gill! A small track through the pine woods leads to the nature reserve. The cove is reminiscent of those in the Desert des Agriates in Northern Corsica, with a small lagoon has been trapped behind the cove by a shingle bank.No wandering wild cattle here though!

A footpath follows the coast, but in places it is alarmingly eroded and close to the cliff-edge

The cliffs have collapsed in places. The rock is an ochre tufa-like consistency, crumbly in some places and hard as concrete in others. It has all kinds of pebbles buried in it - it looks like re-inforced concrete - but it is natural. Gill found coral fragments in it. We speculated that it could have been the remains of a much more ancient ocean than the Med, which in geological terms is quite recent.

Gill banging the rocks together to see what is within them. We had the cove to ourselves, it was great just to mooch about, then sit and watch the sea.

Someone had constructed a rock pattern in the shingle. There are no kids about, so it must have been some fellow grey-hair re-discovering a 'Lascaux-like' urge to make their mark. We're not so different really from the people who walked out of Africa.

Stone age patterns to plastic age patterns, how magical this washed-up plastic sandal would have appeared to our ancestors, but they would recognise its woven technique and understood that it was decorated with stylised flowers, no we are not so different.

Except the coffee is much better now, oh the joys of technical progress as we bathe in the glorious glow of the Enlightenment!

Lindt chocolate, Lavazza coffee - who says  European culture is in decline.....not us!