Boadella i les Escaules

The church bell strikes noon. Nobody stirs. A tractor idles outside the only grocery shop, its driver inside buying a single tin of tomatoes. This is Boadella i les Escaules at midday in May – a scatter of stone houses wedged between the last ripple of Pyrenean foothills and the cork-oak forests of Alt Empordà, 25 kilometres inland from the Costa Brava's crowded coves.

A Reservoir, Not a Resort

Most visitors come chasing the reservoir. Officially the embalse de Darnius-Boadella, it stretches 7 km along the Muga valley, its bottle-green water reflecting cliffs of Mediterranean scrub. Unlike the manicured lakes of the Lake District, this is a working water-supply lake with fluctuating levels; in drought years the shoreline retreats by fifty metres and what looked like a sandy cove on Google Earth is suddenly a meadow of cracked mud. Come after heavy spring rains and you'll share the water with only a handful of kayakers and the odd osprey.

Swimming is allowed only on the eastern arm, marked by two faded buoys. The surface warms quickly – 24 °C by late June – but drop a metre and the temperature plummets; perfect after a hot walk along the 12 km horseshoe trail that starts at the dam car park (€2 coins only; barrier height 2.1 m, so tall vans beware). No lifeguards, no snack kiosk, just a portable toilet that is locked from October to Easter. Bring water and shade: the only tree is a single pine that locals have christened "la oficina" because everyone queues for its shadow.

Tracks, Not Tick-Lists

The village itself offers twenty minutes of wandering: a twelfth-century church whose door is kept unlocked by the baker's wife, three streets of stone houses with wooden balconies painted the colour of dried blood, and a bar that smells of strong coffee and tractor diesel. That's it. The appeal lies in what starts at the last streetlamp.

GR-11, the long-distance Pyrenean footpath, brushes past the municipal boundary. From the church door it's a 400-metre climb to the ridge known as Serra de les Ferreres; the track is an old mule trail paved with granite slabs polished smooth by centuries of hooves. At the top you look south across the plain towards Figueres and north into a fold of oak-covered valleys that feel like Provence before the tourists arrived. The loop back down via the abandoned Mas Torrent takes two and a half hours, descends through wild rosemary and thyme, and finishes at El Trull d'en Francesc just in time for lunch.

What Lunch Actually Means

El Trull occupies a former olive mill built in 1790; the stone press still sits in the middle of the dining room. There is no à la carte, only a handwritten board listing three starters, three mains and one pudding. Monday to Friday the three-course menú del dia costs €17.50 including half a bottle of house wine and as much bread as you can shamelessly accept. Expect roasted chicken with romesco – a smoky sauce of almonds and ñora peppers that tastes like barbecue without the sweetness – followed by crema catalana, Britain's crème brûlée brasher cousin. Vegetarians get espinacs a la catalana, spinach wilted with raisins and pine nuts; vegans should phone the day before or be prepared to eat a lot of bread.

Service starts at 13:00 sharp. Arrive at 14:30 and they'll feed you, but the kitchen closes at 15:15, no negotiation. Weekends are busier: half of Figueres drives up for the €24 weekend menu, so reserve or queue with the locals on the terrace, swapping gossip in Catalan that slows to a drawl as the wine level drops.

When the Sun Drops, the Volume Does Too

Evenings are quiet. The village shop shuts at 14:00 and doesn't reopen; the bar serves coffee until 20:00, beer until 22:00, then rolls down its metal shutter. If you want nightlife, Figueres is twenty minutes by car – or forty by the twice-daily bus that leaves at 07:05 and 13:10, except Sundays when there isn't one at all. Taxis are €35 each way, so most self-catering visitors stock up at the Bon Preu hypermarket on the outskirts of Figueres before they arrive.

Mobile signal is patchy. Vodafone and O2 drop to one bar in the lanes; EE usually manages three. Most cottages have Wi-Fi, but it's the agricultural variety: fine for email, hopeless for streaming. Owners leave a stack of DVDs and a note saying the same thing in four languages: "Talk to each other instead."

Seasons Change the Access, Not Just the Scenery

Spring brings green wheat and the smell of fennel along the reservoir path; it's the best time for bird-watchers – nightingales, hoopoes, the occasional booted eagle. Temperatures hover either side of 18 °C, perfect for walking, though nights can dip to 7 °C; pack a fleece even in May.

Summer turns brutal by midday. The village sits in a bowl; heat pools and the cicadas roar like faulty electricity. Start walks at dawn or wait until the sun slips behind Roc de Fraussa at 18:00. The reservoir is your swimming pool – shaded parking under the oaks fills by 10:00, so arrive early or cycle in along the converted railway line from Llers (flat, 9 km).

Autumn is harvest time: local farmers load trailers with olives and the smell of wood-smoke drifts from farmhouse chimneys. Mushrooms appear after the first October rains; rovellons (saffron milk-caps) are the prize, but you need a permit from the Catalan forestry office and a Catalan speaker to fill in the form. Without one, stick to photographing them.

Winter is when you discover whether your rental cottage really is insulated. Night frosts are common; the reservoir can steam at sunrise like a Scottish loch. Roads stay open – snow rarely settles below 300 m – but daylight is short and the bar reduces its hours to Friday through Sunday. Many British owners come now for quiet, cheap monthly rents and long hikes under crisp blue skies.

The Honest Truth

Boadella i les Escaules will not change your life. It has no souvenir shops, no music festivals, no cocktail bars. What it offers is space: a place where you can walk for three hours and meet only a shepherd, where lunch is decided by what grew within ten kilometres last week, and where the loudest noise at midnight is the tawny owl that lives in the church tower. If that sounds like deprivation, stay on the coast. If it sounds like breathing space, bring good shoes and a healthy appetite.