Creixell

Sand Between the Railway Tracks

The 10:43 from Barcelona grinds to a halt beside a sunflower field, three kilometres from the sea. This is Creixell-Catalunya station—misleadingly named, as anyone with a suitcase soon discovers. The village proper sits 48 metres above sea level, strung between medieval stone and a two-kilometre sweep of golden sand that appears only after the road dips sharply past the last vineyard. Taxis are scarce; the driver who meets the train is usually the same man who drove down yesterday, and the day before. He'll charge €12 to the beach, €10 back up the hill. Accept it, or start walking.

What unfolds below is not the Costa Dorada of brochures. No karaoke bars, no inflatable playgrounds bobbing offshore. Instead, apartment blocks from the 1980s line a wide promenade, their ground floors given over to hardware shops and bakeries that still close between two and five. The sand is genuinely gold—powder-fine, shelving so gradually that thirty metres from shore the water barely reaches a seven-year-old's waist. British families return year after year precisely because nothing much happens here. The loudest noise in August is the Sunday-evening drumming circle that sets up beside the yacht club, handing out spare bongos to anyone who can keep a rumba beat.

A Parish Church That Outlasted Pirates

Walk uphill at dusk and the modern façades peel away. Carrer Major narrows to the width of a single donkey cart; the stone underfoot is polished smooth by six centuries of sandals, clogs, flip-flops. At the top, the parish church of Sant Jaume squats like a fortress, which is more or less what it was when Barbary corsairs cruised this coast. Look closely and you’ll spot the machicolations—stone brackets where defenders once poured boiling oil. Evening mass still starts at 19:00, amplified only by the priest's baritone and the occasional cough from three rows of elderly widows in black. Visitors are welcome; shorts are tolerated if they cover the knee.

Beyond the church square, lanes fan out in a grid laid down after the reconquest of Tarragona in the twelfth century. Some houses retain their original Gothic doorways, the stone carved with wheat sheaves and maritime anchors—an honest statement about how Creixell has always lived. One doorway on Carrer de la Pau still bears a burn mark from 1938, when a Nationalist shell punched through before the front stabilised further south. Nobody has thought to plaster it over; in Catalonia, memory tends to stay visible.

Cycling the Old Wine Train

The same railway that dumps you three kilometres away once carried garnacha grapes to the cooperatives of Sant Vicenç de Calders. When Renfe closed the freight branch in 1981, locals lobbied to keep the track bed intact. The result is the Via Verda del Baix Gaià, a greenway that starts behind the bakery and meanders 22 kilometres inland through tunnels of carob and almond. Hire a bike from the garage opposite the Spar (€15 a day; helmets included) and you can freewheel as far as the medieval bridge at El Catllar, stopping only for a cortado in the converted station café at Bonastre. Gradient: negligible. Shade: intermittent. Take water, and don't rely on phone signal—there isn't any until you hit the N-340 underpass.

What to Eat When the Spar is Shut

Self-caterers learn fast: the village shop locks up after the lunch siesta and doesn't reopen until 17:00. If you arrive on a Sunday with an empty fridge, your choices are the chiringuito on the beach (open until the last bather leaves) or the bakery's vending machine outside the church—surprisingly good bocadillos, but don't expect butter. Better to drive ten minutes to Torredembarra's Consum hypermarket, where you can buy proper bacon for full-English cravings and still pick up fideuà noodles for later.

For eating out, El Timó occupies a glass box on the prom and does the best-value fideuà this side of Barcelona—short vermicelli toasted in squid ink, topped with a dollop of alioli the colour of farmhouse custard. Children can fall back on the ubiquitous bikini (a toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich, no relation to swimwear). Adults should order the grilled sardines, served by the half-dozen on a tin plate that sizzles for a full minute. House white comes from the cooperative at Nulles; chilled, it's clean enough to remind you how close the Pyrenees lie.

Winter, When the Tables Go In

Visit in December and the place feels half-asleep. The beach bars stack their plastic chairs, fishermen mend nets beside boats painted the same blue as the French rugby team, and the bakery reduces its hours to "si no hay pan, cerramos". Temperatures hover at 14 °C—T-shirt weather if the tramontana isn't blowing—but the sea is strictly for dogs retrieving tennis balls. What you get instead is a working village. Pensioners argue over cards in the Bar Central; the priest unlocks the church only for Saturday evening mass; Sunday lunch starts with calcots dipped in romesco, ends with crema catalana, and nobody rushes either course.

Accommodation prices drop by half. The modern apartments that rent for €140 a night in August will take €60 in February, and the owners throw in firewood for the balcony brasero. The catch is accessibility: trains thin out to one every two hours, and the bus from Tarragona doesn't run at all on Sundays. Hire a car at Reus airport (25 minutes away) or accept that you are, for a weekend, semi-marooned—which is precisely the point.

August Realities

Come high summer, the population quadruples. Madrid number plates outnumber Catalan ones; the bakery opens at 07:00 and queues form for ensaïmada before the sand has warmed. British voices remain rare—Creixell is marketed in Spain, not Stevenage—but you will share your metre of beach with extended Catalan families who arrive armed with paella pans, folding tables, and grandparents prepared to guard the spot all day. The council lays on inflatable water slides and late-night cinema on the sand; fireworks for the Festa Major start at midnight and continue, intermittently, until the last reveller keels over. Light sleepers should book inland, or bring earplugs.

Parking becomes sport. The free spaces along the rail trail fill by 10:00; after that it's €15 a day in the guarded field behind the yacht club. The ATM in the village still doesn't exist—nearest cash is a three-kilometre drive to Roda de Berà—so stock up before you hit the coast. Weever fish bury themselves in the shallows during July heatwaves; jelly-shoes save tears.

Last Orders at the Yacht Club

By ten o'clock the promenade has emptied. Waiters stack chairs, hose down terraces, and the only light left comes from the yacht club bar where locals debate whether Creixell has sold its soul. Evidence for the prosecution: the new-build block where the fishermen's cooperative stood, the boutique hotel that charges €200 for a sea-view suite, the cocktail list written in English. Evidence for the defence: Sunday evening rumbas, sardines grilled over vine cuttings, and a beach that still belongs, overwhelmingly, to people who live here.

Stay for one more beer and you'll hear the mayor's latest scheme—pedestrianising Carrer Major, installing underground parking, branding the village as "Barcelona's beach" for day-trippers. Nobody looks enthusiastic. They know the train already stops too rarely, that the road down is too steep for coaches, and that, for now, Creixell remains just awkward enough to stay out of the package brochures. Enjoy it while it lasts.