The Wild Coast

Living in Duilhac, not only are you surrounded by landscapes of enormous beauty and great historic sites, you’re well situated to make further discoveries a bit farther afield. Comfortable daytrips include – in France – Toulouse and Carcassonne, Montpellier and the Carmargues, even Nimes. We’re just one to two hours from some of the best ski stations in the Pyrenees, as well as Andorra, and of course the coast isn’t far.

People from the area go to Spain regularly, little more than an hour away. The ex-pats more often than not to catch Ryanair flights from Girona to the UK; the French to buy cheap petrol and to stock up on booze, cigarettes, chorizo, even washing powder and chocolate, in the border towns of Pertuis (where the south side of the main street is in France, and the north side in Spain) and La Jonquera. Unattractive places both. Pertuis for its crammed supermarkets, bootleg perfume shops and greasy cafés. La Jonquera for its KZ-like warehouse structures and dodgy motels and for being a pit stop for truckers working their way up through Europe: roadside prostitution is rife.

Go beyond Jonquera and you’re in Catalonian lands, with the Costa Brava just east of the motorway to Barcelona, and you may be surprised to know that there’s a string of great alternatives to the well-known high-rise hotel world, wall-to-wall traffic, pubs, fish and chips and Full English Breakfasts of the popular charter holiday destination.

Foremost of these, north of the resort stretch, is the Cap de Creus National Park, which covers a total area of 13,886 hectares, making it the largest nature reserve in Catalonia. The Cap de Creus itself is the easternmost point of the Iberian peninsula and legend has it the rocky, dry cape was forged by Hercules. A reminder that the Greeks were here before the Romans: Castelló d’Empúries, on the way to the cape, is the place to go for the Hellenic ruins.

To see for yourself that, as well as being a mad genius, Dalí was a fan of Johnson’s Babypowder go to the Salvador Dalí House-Museum in Port-Lligat, near Cadaqués, but make sure you book before going: only groups of eight at a time are allowed into Dalí’s paradise getaway by the sea, and under strict supervision. Everything stands as he left it, including the talcum bottle on a bathroom shelf.

But best is, of course, the Cap de Creus itself: a big brown claw of rugged cliff, hooked into a splendid azure sea. Getting there is one of the best drives in the region and apart from the natural rewards awaiting you at your remote destination there’s a nice little inexpensive and very unpretentious restaurant by the lighthouse.

Costa Brava, btw, was given its evocative name 101 years ago by the Catalan poet Ferran Agulló and means “the rugged coast” or “the wild coast”.