We've been in Spain now for ten days. Aside from the day we drove from Loupian to I'Escala when it was a tad overcast for a time, the heatwave we experienced in France continued unabated in Catalonia. Wall to wall blue, mid thirties by 11am, the real feel a couple of degrees more, day time temperature in the van.....
Even with all the windows and skylights open it still hovered around the low twenties in the van overnight. The only covering we needed was a cotton sheet, but still we only slept fitfully.
Initially we headed to the Illa Mateua site in the pinewoods behind Cala Montgro. It's a beautiful spot, next to one of the Costa Brava's most alluring coves.
The place is on the outskirts of l'Escala, a pleasant low key resort at the southern end of the Bay of Roses. We know the area well and keep returning to it because there's lots of opportunities to mooch about doing this and that - a cliff top ramble with a view across the bay towards the Pyrenees, a cycle track into town with the promise of a coffee or a gelato at the end of it, swimming or paddleboarding in the clear waters of the nearby cove. All lovely things, but curtailed this time because it was simply too hot most of the time to do anything.
The day we arrived was a little cooler and cloudy, so we did climb the hill at the back of the site and admire the distant view of the mountains.
Most days we took a stroll through the trees that edge the cove, but weren't tempted to spend time at the beach.
It was busier than we are ued to, probably because when we've been here previously it either later in the autumn or in the Spring. September is no longer 'low season', retirees and couples without kids head en-masse for the Med while the weather is still comfortable for a beach holiday but the resorts are more adult rather than family orientated.
The result is that the 'shoulder season' can be almost as frantic as the high season The Illa Mateua campsite has now acquired the suffix 'resort'. Its p changed character since we first used it nine years ago. As now the site was split between a flat area dedicated to tourers on the right of the main road and a series of terraces to the left in pine woods straggling up a steep hill.
We prefer this area, partly because its shadier and feels more relaxed. Also it used to house a lots of Spanish statics. Weekends were slightly raucous, an impromptu fiesta as extended Spanish families cooked a big lunch that morphed seamlessly into a party that lasted until midnight.
Today there seems to be only a handful of seasonal pitches remaining. Now the majority of people using the upper pitches are tourists from elsewhere - recently retired French and German couples predominanate. It's all a bit bourgeois and not to our taste. It remains a beautiful spot, but the beach is much busier than it used to be and the campsite feels more corporate. I wonder if we will return again.
As ever I have a plan sketched out for our trip. We rarely stick to it and often it's the weather that puts the kibosh on things. Usually we are trying to dodge the rain, I never anticipated having to adjust our plan because it was too sunny.
We left Cala Montgro still intending to stay at a parking place by the Lidl at Palafuguel. The spot was well reviewed on 'Searchforsites' and the nearby cycleway to Pals looked interesting.
When we arrived at the place the area was just a piece of waste ground near a roundabout. A couple of other half abandoned looking mohos were parked-up and the environs felt a tad sketchy. Furthermore, it had no shade whatsoever, the afternoon temperature was forecast to reach the mid-thirties, dropping back to around 24° overnight.We abandoned our planned cycle trip.
Instead we decided to drive south during the heat of the day heading to a shady campsite we knew at L'Ametlla de Mar. The town is a few miles north of the Ebro delta at the opposite end of Catalonia, a 180 mile drive down the AP7 skirting the sprawl of Barcelona and Tarragona.
At times there were hold-ups, but we managed to arrive at Camping Nautic just after 5pm.
Whatever happens our stay is likely to be less eventful than our previous one in early October 2017. It coincided with a constitutional crisis prompted by Catalonia's regional government plan to hold an independence referendum. As the Spanish King began an evening address on TV calling for national unity the population of I'Ametila took to their balconies and began banging on pots and pans to drown out the broadcast. All seems very peaceful now, but I suspect the issue has simply been shelved rather than resolved, similar to the situation in the Basque Country, Corsica, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Camping Nautic has been upgraded significantly since then, but it still remains a relaxed kind of place with it's own pine clad cove - Cala de Pixavaques, but it's also on the edge of town. So it's easy to walk to the shops.
A perfect place to be holed-up in a heatwave. We stayed for a week and did very little. By 11am the temperature reached the mid thirties and stayed that way until sunset.
Days drifted by, rushing about was not an option...
Our pitch was close to the beach. Sunrise happened around 8am. We could watch it rise without stirring out of bed...
After breakfast before the temperature became intolerable I paddled about for a bit, some days I had the cove to myself.
The moho awning is insufficient to provide shade in the middle of the day. We carry two big cotton throws and peg them onto the awning's fascia to create a shady space when there's a heatwave. It's the first time we have had to use both of them.
More days drift by. We spend hours doing very little, I wonder if brain activity slows as the outside temperature creeps up towards body temperature.
Around fiveish a cooling breeze blows in from the sea, I've taken to having an early evening swim. Our pitch is about fifty metres from the beach, which is accessed through a gate with a code. It exercises both body and brain because forgetting the four digit number results in a half kilometre detour to the site's main entrance.
Cala de Pixavaques is about 200m long. By day three I plucked up the courage to swim it's length, Most of the cove is quite shallow - around 1.5m, so I could just about reach the bottom, but a section in the middle was deeper. It isn't really a challenging swim, but since I took up paddleboarding I haven't been swimming much, apart from the occasional moment when I've taken a brief unplanned dip! So swimming across the cove proved I hadn't lost my confidence entirely and had built-up my stamina a bit. Gill took a photograph of me halfway across...
We also walked into town a couple of times. L'Ametila is an unpretentious small port that developed from a fishing village into a medium sized town during the latter half of the last century.
The older part consists of a tangle of steep, narrow streets behind the harbour.
The more recent developments form a grid of rectilinear lo-rise blocks built around a series of public squares. The town is utilitarian rather than beautiful, but it feels lived in and lively, it has character.
A surefire sign of this is the small municipal market that's open six days a week, it sells fabulous fresh ingredients and useful stuff like underwear and work clothes. No tourist tat to be seen!
We like the town, sadly it was too hot to simply mooch around. We spent most days squirreled under the awning seeking shadow.
Over the past week at twilight we've watched the moon wax from bean-shaped to a squished balloon. Last night it became full - a plump harvest moon glinting silver on the calm sea.
Where next has been the main topic of conversation over the past couple of days. Rain is forecast, we have decided to head to Valencia Camper Park for the three days. A city visit makes more sense in showery weather than a beach. Also, Valencia is a crossroads, we can head north towards Teruel and Rioja, or southwest towards Cartegena or Almeria. When the weather pattern for early October becomes clearer, we'll decide.
Under the circumstances I can't think of anywhere better to have hunkered down for a week than here at Camping Nautic - the pitches are shaded, the facilities good, the site well managed and friendly and its is situated by a lovely beach next to an amiable seaside town. All is good.
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