August on the Costa Brava

It's out of sequence I know, but the peak high season weeks in August is all many visitors know about the Costa Brava when, in reality, it's quite different from the start of the year.

In discussing August, I really have to include the last two weeks of July. The actual holiday season is quite short. While locals might start swimming in June, the hottest weather tends to come at the end of July and the start of August, lasting up until the first summer storms and sea clouds.

This year has been extremely hot, reaching 40C in inland towns and into high mid-thirties (33-34C) on the coast. The water has also been exceptionally warm, getting up to 28C along a lot of the coast between L'Estartit and Blanes, albeit marginally cooler further north.

The temperature makes a big difference to the rhythm of the day. The temptation for holiday-makers is to head out to the beach and sunbathe all day, but local people often take a dip first thing in the morning, when the water is coolest and clearest, or into the evening after work, as the holidaymakers leave. Mid-day is for shade and cool if you can find it. Things happen late in summer for locals, even though holidaymakers arrive looking for dinner at 6pm.

It also means that inland towns get too hot for browsing or visiting. In Spring and Autumn they will have a lively bustle, but in mid-summer they can feel quiet and empty - at least until the night and the evening when they become active with food and festa majors.

Consequently, many August tourists will stick to the coast and coastal towns, creating a large tourist buzz (with a lot of French and Dutch visitors this year) that overwhelms the local rhythms, and obviously brings in a lot of business for every bar and restaurant working manically to make their sales.

The roads also fill up. Fridays and Sundays have traffic jams and tail-backs heading back to the AP7. Parking is crammed, and the roads become unpleasant to drive with rush-about visitors who drive too close and too fast (hey, you're on holiday, not on your commute to work).

Summer also brings lots of music festivals in addition to the festa majors up and down the coast - from Cap Roig to White Summer to Peralada to Port Ferrada. And at sea, all sorts of boat trips, canoe hire and water activity is available to get to somewhere cooler offshore. There's a lot going on if you want it.

In August our preference is to swim after work mostly - heading to the beach for 7pm, seeking out the cooler bays. In previous years, we've headed inland looking for river pools (Gorgs) to swim in, but that tends to be later in August when the hot days have broken. We do some 'tourist' stuff - a boat ride along the coast from Palamos this year - but mostly it's do less while the sun is burning. We also stop walking as it's too hot and uncomfortable. If you want to walk the GR92 do it outside peak summer.

This year the storms came just before the last week of the month, bringing relief from the heatwave and cooling the sea water to make it more pleasant for swimming and making the nights cooling for sleeping without air-conditioning. But the last week of August also feels like the season is coming to an end, and is already quieter than earlier in the month, the big French and European influx heading home.

For holiday visitors, August makes the Costa Brava feel like it is all about 'the resort' which is lively, fun and buzzing during the holiday season. Unfortunately, it always seems lock-in a view of the Costa Brava that is very summer-vacation orientated and misses out on the other things the Costa Brava has during the rest of the year.