8 July 2022

I woke in pitch darkness wondering why I felt so awake, until I realised it was 9am and the window shutters had completely blocked the daylight from our room. I suggested hiring a car for the day to go and see the mountains and national parks north and west of Girona – Les Guilleries and Parc Natural de la Zona Volcanica de la Garrotxa. After a couple of biscuits and a peach kindly provided by our AirBnb host, we headed through the warm streets of Old Town and across the river to find the car hire place.

The city west of the river is newer and less charming than the east, but the streets were clean and quiet. We walked between tall buildings and through the large plaza by the station in an unsuccessful search for a convenience shop selling sandwiches – it seems that Catalan businesses have quite sporadic opening hours, and there’s certainly no such thing as a meal deal. We grabbed paprika crisps from one shop, sun cream from another, and eventually found the car hire place in a strange, dead quiet residential area – all shuttered up.

Platja d’Aro Municipality

A little exasperated, we decided to head back to the station to catch a bus to the coast. We walked along clean, quiet main roads past a busy corner café (presumably full of car hire people) and a couple of telecoms engineers working on a pop-up table under a parasol, to the amusement of Ryan (the telecoms engineer.) At the large, air-conditioned bus station, a lovely English lady helped us find the right bus and we waited in the queue for the 11.45 departure to Platja d’Aro.

Rather than the low, long, slightly oppressive box full of people, handrails and stop buttons that I’m accustomed to as a not-very-regular participant in the English public transport system, the bus was what I’d consider a touring coach. It was comfortable and nobody paid attention to the face mask signs. The journey took us through quiet, dry towns with pale buildings and low-angled terracotta rooves and past flat, golden fields backed by distant mountains. It was interesting to see some of rural Catalonia, and we arrived in the large coastal town of Platja d’Aro after 40 minutes.

We checked the return times and walked through a large, palm-lined plaza towards the sea. This town felt more modern and touristy than Girona, with lots of beach apartments and an almost Miami-like vibe – to us, anyway. We turned off a street onto the beachfront, which was crammed with outdoor bars and restaurants looking out over pale sand and clear, blue water.  Platja Gran d’Aro beach was busy enough but far from crowded, and we walked for 20 minutes along the wide, paved promenade to the quiet northern stretch of sand.

Platja Rovira Beach

The path curved and narrowed into an open passage as we walked between a rock face and a low wall, which took us up some steps and through a tunnel. We emerged at the back of a sandy cove where interesting rock formations punctuated the sand a little way below us, including an upright pinnacle that begged to be climbed, and verdant shrubs spilled from the wall where the land dropped away. We carried on and the path arced around to the left revealing Platja Rovira, another small stretch of sand separated from the cove and main beach by rocks jutting into the sea. We liked the look of this beach, which was also busy but not rammed, so we wandered down to find a spot.

We set our towel (Ryan didn’t bring his) down at the far end below more high, vegetation-topped rocks, and buried our valuables ready to go in the sea. The “sand” was more like extremely fine, smooth, almost white gravel, which felt nice underfoot and was blissfully easy to brush off. We managed no more than a few minutes “relaxing” before grabbing our snorkels and trotting off to the sea, which shelved steeply and provided respite from the burning heat, which thankfully was tempered by a light breeze.

The water was clear, deep and incredibly blue. We swam over rocky worlds absolutely mesmerised by the unfamiliar fish – colourful purple-yellow-green wrasse, large, bottom-feeding mullet, some kind of piranha-shaped things with fine stripes and thick lips, snake-like red and black things, huge shoals of tiny shiny things and small bright orange things, all hovering around the anemone, urchin and grass-like weed covered rocks.

We snorkelled for half an hour, swam across to a floating pontoon for the sole and fully legitimate purpose of jumping off, and headed back to the beach for a second attempt at relaxing. That didn’t last long, and we ended up packing up and walking back to Platja Gran d’Aro in search of some lunch. We found a medium-sized supermarket on a street behind the beach and were bemused to find only four sandwiches in the whole shop. We left with a strange combination of snacks – a sandwich that was half omelette, half ham and cheese, some dubious looking ham and cheese toasties, paprika Lays, a couple of mojito beers, a litre of sangria and a quarter watermelon.

Platja Gran d’Aro Beach

We stopped to eat at a grassy, shady spot along the beachfront. The watermelon, sangria, crisps and ham and cheese sandwich were lovely, but the omelette sandwich was a serious undertaking – heavy, vinegarey and generally unpleasant. I’d expected Ryan to share the melon but he didn’t want any, so having decided to return to a different part of the beach, I waddled back to the north end of Gran Platja d’Aro feeling very full. We sat near the rocks at the end, buried our stuff in the gravelly sand and pulled on snorkels ready to go and find some more fish.

We spent another half hour mesmerised by the colours and shapes of the underwater world, where undulating rocks formed foundations for cities of fish, spiky black urchins, huge anemones and grassy weed. We braved taking my waterproof iPhone 12 Pro in the water and despite the immense difficulty of simultaneously clutching it with one hand, constantly rearranging our cheap snorkels, not kicking rocks and staying afloat, we got some great footage (in amongst the mass of blurry, noisy, shaky footage). We headed back to the sand about 7pm on deciding that in our attempt to take videos, we’d swallowed way too much seawater.

We buried my legs in the sand for no good reason, drank sangria and messed around on the rocks, then set off back to the bus station along the still buzzing promenade. We caught the 8.30pm bus back to Girona and enjoyed the sunset over the distant hazy blue mountains, golden fields and quiet towns.

Back in Girona

We went straight from the bus station to our apartment, dumped our bags and quickly changed before heading out for dinner. We walked through the narrow streets of Old Town, which were lit warmly and colourfully by the various restaurants and shops, to the Konig restaurant by the tall, beautifully lit Basilica. We sat outside in kind of a courtyard by the open, carless street and were once again amazed by the lateness of life in Catalonia – we didn’t start eating until 11pm but the restaurant was busy with people, including young children. Feeling still full of melon and salt water, I had a prawn, egg and avocado salad with bread and Ryan had a lovely risotto with prawn and scallop skewers and grilled courgette. Satisfied, knackered and still salty, we headed straight back to our room and dropped off to sleep.