The coast south of Cambrils

What to do

The coast here rewards driving past the obvious. Salou is the name everyone knows, and the beach itself is crowded and dull; it earns its keep in summer for a night out and not much else. Cap Salou, out on the headland, is better. Better again is south of Cambrils — Platja Cristall, Calafat, and a string of little coves with clear water, usually. So drive south if a cove is what you’re after, and go outside the peak August fortnight if you can. That ranking deserves explaining rather than just asserting, because Salou is the name on every road sign and it takes some confidence to drive past it. The main beach is a long, wide, well-serviced town beach with a promenade behind it, and it does exactly what that kind of beach does: sun loungers, cafés every fifty metres, and in July and August a great many people. If that is the holiday you want, it is good at it and everything you need is within walking distance of the sand. What it is not is quiet or characterful, and it is thirty-five minutes from a house whose entire appeal is quiet and characterful. Going all that way to sit in a crowd is worth avoiding. Cap Salou is the compromise and a good one. The headland at the eastern end of the town breaks up into a series of smaller bays with pine coming down to the rocks, and they are better than the main strand by a distance while still having somewhere to get a coffee. If somebody in the group wants facilities and somebody else wants a cove, this is where the argument ends. Where Salou earns its reputation is after dark in summer. It is the nightlife town on this stretch of coast, by a wide margin, and Kai’s own summary is that it is good for parties in the summer and that is it. Taken on those terms it is a real recommendation rather than a grudging one: if a night out is what somebody in the group is missing, this is where it is, and a taxi home costs less than the disappointment of trying to find the same thing in a hill village. Two practical notes for anyone who does head down. Parking near the front in August is its own small ordeal, and the paid car parks a few streets back are worth the money rather than circling. And the water is shallow and gently shelving along the main beach, which is the one genuine argument for it over the coves if you are here with small children — the pretty bays south of Cambrils are rockier, deeper sooner, and less forgiving of a three-year-old. That is the honest summary of the whole stretch, in fact. Salou for facilities, nightlife and easy swimming with toddlers; Cap Salou when you want somewhere prettier without giving up a coffee; the coves south of Cambrils when the water itself is the point. Knowing which of those three you are in the mood for on any given morning is most of what makes a beach day here good. It is also the practical base for PortAventura, which sits just inland of the town, so a family doing the park often ends up in Salou anyway. Combining the two — park by day, seafront dinner after — is a reasonable use of a long day, and a better reason to be here than the beach itself. The promenade is the part of the town that survives the crowds best. It runs the length of the front, it is properly planted, and walking it in the hour before dinner while the heat goes out of the day is a pleasant thing to do that costs nothing and asks nothing of you. Out of season it is close to empty and rather good — which is the pattern for this whole stretch of coast, and the single most useful thing to know when you are deciding which week to come.