01 April 08

Features

IS THE COAST CLEAR?

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When the third intergalactic space trooper with fluorescent green hair came into the restaurant I knew it was time to go easy on the Rioja. But then, it had been a rather long and bizarre day.

I had started out in the morning from the resort town of Platja d’Aro, along the coastal footpath the Cami de Ronda, which stretches along the Catalan coast of eastern Spain. With only myself, some seagulls, terns and the occasional fellow pedestrian for company, it was four hours – with wine and a few picturesque stops along the way – before I reached the busy fishing port of Palamós at dusk.

Upon entering the town, a white van screeched to a halt and girls wearing little more than sequins erupted from the back, and began prancing up the street pursued by pink centaurs. Around the corner, a parade of yellow-hatted Buddhist monks cavorted to a samba and two policewomen smiled benignly as a truckload of cutlass-wielding pirates bore down on them. It was only then that I realised my hike up the coast had coincided with Carnival, the last frenetic celebration before the lean 40 days of Lent.

There had been little hint of the crazy antics to come when I set out from Platja d’Aro, where the streets were empty and apartment blocks were still shuttered up for winter. The 60km Cami de Ronda route, which forms part of the much longer Grande Randonée 92 walking trail, begins from this town on a path just below a small cliff above the beach. It skirts tiny coves where Roman galleys once loaded corn and olive oil 2,000 years ago and where, more recently, smugglers travelled, as did the coastguards, determined to stamp out the illicit trade in spirits and tobacco. I wondered whether there were any illicit goings on still happening today?

“Bon dia,” a couple out walking their dog call to me, as I traverse the white sand of an otherwise deserted beach. I inquire if smugglers still land illegal cargo along the coast, and get a chuckle in reply.

“Not since the Civil War,” says Pilar. “But who knows, there are some very secret places on the Cami de Ronda.”

As I leave them and walk on, I’m all the more determined to search, and eventually I round a rocky headland to the wide bay of Palamós. Now this place is certainly not secret, the sea dotted with power-kiters and windsurfers taking advantage of a brisk westerly wind. No smugglers then, but a spectacular view.

That evening I stay in a small hotel in La Fosca, just beyond the fishing port, and it’s here I have my encounter with the space troopers who have spent the day touring the town in the carnival procession. They were dancing until 4am. I, meanwhile, weary from my 20km walk (still 40km more to go over the next two days), managed a final cognac at the bar before retiring early.

Next morning, the sun shining from a cloudless sky, I continue on the trail across the Cala Castell, one of the most beautiful and pristine beaches on the whole of the Costa Brava. The path crosses through an ancient Stone Age settlement on a headland and then through woodland above steep cliffs to a smaller beach, Cala Estreta. Here, in a tiny old fisherman’s hut, two men drinking coffee tell me how local people had fought long battles in the 1980s and 1990s to preserve this entire section of the coast from property developers.

“This is the most beautiful part of the Cami,” says Jordi, a man in his sixties. “And this the most beautiful time to walk here. You have chosen well!”

He’s right. But even he can’t direct me to any stashed hoards of treasure. I sit with them and eat a leisurely picnic of anchovies, goats’ cheese and crisp bread purchased earlier in Palamós. Afterwards, I continue along a narrow path climbing through cork oak woods, above more steep hidden coves, until, at 4pm, I come down to the tiny village of Calella de Palafrugell. At a café on the seafront, relaxing with a glass of wine, I catch sight of a fisherman suddenly tugging hard on his rod. With incredible efficiency he pulls in an octopus, its long tentacles wrapping around his hand, before he swiftly dispatches it with his knife.

A couple of hours later I reach a small village of white houses fronting the pebbly beach of Llafranc, and take a room at the Hotel Levant overlooking the sea. The next morning, the shutters on my windows are shaken by a fierce wind and the surf breaking against the shore is huge and foreboding. Sipping hot coffee in the Levant’s bar I look at the photographs of movie stars and artists that line the walls – Dali, Picasso, Kirk Douglas and more – all of whom made this part of the Costa Brava their playground from the 1950s to the 1970s, and wonder if they had any run-ins with smugglers during the dark times of General Franco’s reign.