The London Daily Telegraph

April 15, 2000

Travel: Spain's hidden coast: Costa de la Luz

West of Gibraltar is a shoreline the Spanish have kept to themselves. Joanna Symons enjoys it with her family, while Fred Mawer provides a guide for future explorers

The worst thing about going to the Costa de la Luz is having to repeat the name every time someone asks you where you've been. Luz (as in looth tooth) is hard to carry off (don't even attempt it if you're eating a biscuit) and by the time you've finished saying it, most people have lost interest and wandered off anyway.

Then, invariably, there's the rigmarole of explaining where it is. The British, normally so quick to spot new holiday territory, haven't yet earmarked the stretch of coast west of Gibraltar. The Spanish, understandably, have kept quiet about it, happy to let the rest of Europe pile on to the other costas while they decamp to the beaches of Atlantic Andalusia with their parasols and extended families.

There wasn't even a hint of a breeze on the hot, claustrophobic drive from Malaga airport along the Costa del Sol, with pinhole views of the Mediterranean between high-rise blocks. "I knew we shouldn't have come," said my husband every five minutes. "Everyone says it's been ruined." He cheered up a bit though, when we came to Gibraltar, like a giant ski jump pointing to the purple peaks of the Atlas Mountains across the Strait.
And as we rounded the headland beyond Algeciras, the coast suddenly emptied. Traffic died away, the high-rises petered out and the landscape took on a wild and rugged look. Off went the air conditioning and down went the windows to let in the breeze. Seconds later, up went the windows as a small gale nearly whisked the map - and the children -out of the back window.

As if to drum home the point, giant windmills - not the rustic Don Quixote sort, but vast white metal turbines - loomed up ahead, at once mesmerising and alarming, throwing spinning shadows across the road. Like an epic crucifixion scene they covered the hills around, sails flailing, generating enough energy to power a million disco strobes on the Costa del Sol. No wonder it's called the Coast of Light. "Don't suppose you packed the windbreak," said my husband quietly.

On the coast below, the coloured sails of windsurfers streaked over the sea like flocks of high-speed parrots and the wind had whipped sand into a great golden coiffe, perhaps a hundred feet high.

Inland, brown fields of spent sunflowers rolled away into the distance, with just the odd aloe-like cactus or horseman silhouetted against the horizon.

Wind and the tarmac finally ran out at El Palmar, the little seaside village where we were staying. Too small to get a mention in the guidebooks, it had just two roads, each barely wide enough for cars to pass. One led to a small supermarket, the other ran for about a mile alongside a spectacular beach and petered out into sandy track at either end.

Our house was about six large potholes from the sea, one of seven in a small and attractive development, each with its own garden and a shared - and lovely - pool.

The children had already spotted our neighbours. "That boy's at my school," Henry (seven) had announced as we waited for our hire car at the airport. He was, and by one of those strange quirks of holiday fate, his family turned out to be staying next door. "Not quite the remote setting we'd expected," they said as we pulled up, glancing at the houses in various stages of completion across the tracks. El Palmar was a village on the cusp of becoming a resort, with rooms to rent rather than hotels.

But it still had a relaxed, end-of-the-road feel, the breeze was perfect, like a giant fan tempering the sun and we were a five-minute walk from the wide, golden beach, with clear water and perfect body-boarding surf. ("Just like Cornwall," said one of our neighbours, completely won over.) Lining the beach road were several small bars and restaurants serving whatever the fishing boats had brought in that day, and a few shops selling surf boards and ice creams.

The beaches all along this stretch of coast are like a parade of impossibly beautiful blonde models; one was perhaps more sheltered, one might have bigger surf or finer sand, but any one could hold its own among great beaches of the world. And all were frequented by good-natured Spanish families, who set up camp beneath rainbow-coloured parasols, so that by mid-afternoon, the beaches looked like a series of Impressionist paintings in the strong Atlantic light.

The children struck up friendships by sign language and beach football and when we discovered that we had been watching the wrong pair of red trunks in the waves - and therefore the wrong child - and that our little red trunks were nowhere to be seen, word passed from parasol to

parasol with the speed of light. Within minutes Henry was returned by a triumphant Spanish mother, who had found him, lost, a few yards down the beach. There were embraces all round - much to Henry's embarrassment - and the mother slipped him a handful of sweets.

It wasn't his only lucky break. In nearby Vejer de la Frontera, a Moorish hilltop town with white corkscrew streets, shopkeepers pressed treats into the children's hands and ruffled their hair. And at La Caleta tapas bar in Cadiz, the formal, rather stern black-suited waiters broke into smiles as William (nine) practised his shaky Spanish and tried to eat squid cooked in ink.

Old Cadiz, on a peninsula sticking out into the Atlantic, was an approachable, good-natured place, a bit dilapidated but full of atmosphere. Around the great Baroque cathedral, tall alleys of handsome, peeling, limestone houses, with bay windows and wrought-iron balconies, emptied into sunny squares. From a balcony at the top of the Torre Tavira Museum, in the centre of the old town, I discovered the city's secret; dozens of domed and turreted watchtowers, invisible from the narrow streets below, which look out over the city ramparts to the sea.

There was an even better view from the top of the ruined castle at Medina Sidonia, a 360-degree panorama that seemed to take in most of southern Spain. This is just the sort of historic hilltop town that would draw visitors by the thousand if it were in Tuscany or southern France, yet here the dazzling white streets were so quiet that we spoke in whispers.

We were the only people that afternoon to look round the magnificent church, with altarpieces of Mexican silver brought from the New World. "We are trying to raise the money to restore the church," said the young student volunteer who showed us around. "But the cracks are big and the money is little and the Bishop lives in Cadiz . . ."

Jerez de la Frontera, by rude contrast, was touristy, traffic-ridden and rather full of its own importance. It produced the only really bad meal of the week (our fault for believing the man in the tourist office when he directed us to a pedestrianised shopping area for lunch). And although there was a sherry warehouse, owned by the likes of Sandeman and Gonzalez Byass, at almost every corner, actually buying a bottle was out of the question. Either the cellars were closed because it was August or Thursday or lunchtime, or the buying process had to include a protracted tour and tasting - not a good idea with two children desperate for the beach.

Somehow, even the display of dressage at the Royal Andalucian School of Equestrian Art was a bit po-faced. Perfectly groomed and drilled horses and riders performed an equine version of formation dancing, the animals stepping and swaying to the music, while the audience clapped and fluttered fans. It was faultlessly executed, but slightly too restrained for the children, who would have preferred the drama and thundering hooves of a rodeo.

It was the thunder of guns that we imagined, sounding in the distance as we stood on the headland at Cape Trafalgar, just south of El Palmar - even if it was no more than the buffeting of the wind. The eponymous battle took place several miles offshore and gunfire is probably all that those on the Cape would have known about it.

More concrete evidence of Spain's nautical history was pointed out to us on the Guadalquivir River - the quay from which Christopher Columbus set off for his second voyage to the Americas. We saw it from the deck of a restored paddle steamer, which chugged up river from Sanlucar with a cargo of tourists, bound for the dunes and salt marshes and migrant birds of the Coto Donana National Park.

This was August and migrants were thin on the ground, but black kites circled over the shore, and across mudflats popping with crabs, we watched flamingos, spoonbills and sandpipers feeding in the shimmering heat. And it was here, on one of our brief excursions ashore, that Henry managed a remarkable feat. Only one dog is allowed in the Park, a rather frisky mongrel owned by an original inhabitant of the area. Yet somehow, among the Coto Donana's wild and lonely 60,000 acres, Henry located and accidentally stepped in a rare and previously undiscovered deposit of dog poo.

Joanna Symons and family travelled with Simply Spain (020 8541 2208; www.simplytravel.co.uk); one week at El Palmar villas costs from pounds 285 per person low season to pounds 525 during late July and August, including flights and car hire. Child discounts are sometimes available.

From here to there

Getting there

The low-cost airline buzz (0870 240 7070) has a new weekly service from Stansted to Jerez, with returns starting at pounds 160. Monarch (08700 405040) flies from Luton to Gibraltar from pounds 235; GB Airways (book through BA: 0345 222111) from Gatwick to Gibraltar and Seville; and Iberia (020 7830 0011) from Heathrow to Seville; all around pounds 270. Fares are for August and include taxes.

Tour operator

Fred Mawer travelled with Magic of Spain (0990 462442), which offers some of the best hotels on the coast. Citalia (020 8686 3638) also has a good selection, as has Mundi Color (020 7828 6021). Operators offering self-catering, plus a few hotels, include Simply Spain (020 8541 2208), Spain at Heart (01373 836070), Travellers' Way (01527 559000) and - self-catering only - Vintage Travel (01954 261431).

Getting around

Fred Mawer hired a car through Holiday Autos (0870 400 0000); a week's all-inclusive rental of an economy car costs pounds 125 in August.

When to go

The resorts are very busy in August, lively from early July to mid-September and very quiet earlier or later in the year, with many businesses shut. From June to the end of September it's reliably sunny.

Eating and drinking

The fish - especially shellfish, tuna and pescaito frito (mixed fried fish) - is fantastic. Few menus are in English, so take a dictionary if you want to know what you're ordering. Locals rarely eat three-course meals, preferring to laden the table with tapas and raciones (larger portions) to share.

The local sherry is dirt cheap (about 40p a glass). The dry fino and manzanillo are the best to accompany tapas. A popular, less alcoholic alternative, is a tinto de verano, a red wine and lemonade spritzer served with ice.

Guidebooks

The Rough Guide to Andalucia ( pounds 9.99) covers the coast in enthusiastic detail. A new edition is out in August.

Price watch

If Magic of Spain offers the hotel, we give its prices per person sharing a double room for a week between mid-July and late August, including flights and car hire. Rates are 20-30 per cent lower earlier or later in the summer.

Otherwise, we give the hotel's phone number (add 0034 from the UK), and the b & b rate per double room per night. Restaurant prices are approximate for a full meal without drinks. At tapas bars, expect to pay 75p- pounds 1 a tapa, pounds 4- pounds 6 a racion.