SERRA DE L'ALBERA COSTA BRAVA

The Albera mountain range, on the French border, is where the Pyrenees begin their long descent into the sea. It is a place of frontier villages and mountain passes, of vineyards, olive groves and cork forests and, in the north, a natural park which offers excellent walking along tracks once used by smugglers and refugees. The park's information centre is at Espolla, a village of narrow streets huddled around a church. Espolla is at the heart of the Costa Brava's wine industry.

A hair-raising drive from Sant Climent, best attempted in an off-road vehicle, snakes across the mountains to the Castell de Requesens, a restored medieval castle on the site of an earlier fortress. A good road from here, through the village of Cantallops, leads to the border crossing at La Jonquera, where lorries thunder past on the motorway from Pris to Barcelona.

Anyone who visited the Costa Brava in 1950 would not recognize this region today. Huge concrete resorts have been created out of little more than fishing harbors, and in summer the coastline reverberates to the sound of the disco beat. Resorts like Lloret de Mar and Platja d'Aro led the way into mass tourism and they are still among the busiest in Spain Not everywhere on the south coast is like this. Sant Feliu de Gufxols and Tossa de Mar are also popular resorts, but their old towns retain a lot of charm. Towns like Blanes and Palamas are still fishing ports as well as tourist centers. And even on the most crowded stretches of coastline it is still possible to find a hidden cove, a reminder of what the Costa Brava used to be before the tourists took over.