6 issues to do in Spain’s Costa de la Luz

From wild Atlantic seashores to pine-clad cliffs and seafood feasts within the dunes, Spain’s luminous Costa de la Luz is a area that rewards sluggish discovery. Shaped by historical past and nature, it’s a spot the place tuna has been fished for millennia, wetlands echo with hen calls, and horses canter into blazing sunsets. Its contrasts are putting, its tales compelling — and these six highlights seize the coast’s enduring attract.

1. Dine on tuna within the dunes

For three millennia, Atlantic bluefin tuna has been fished within the bountiful waters off the Costa de la Luz utilizing an elaborate net-and-line approach often known as almadraba. Today, the observe isn’t simply the culinary cornerstone of this shoreline, it’s a part of the cultural material — celebrated in every little thing from ceramic-tile mosaics to put names and seafront sculptures. Befitting its identify, the city of Zahara de los Atunes (Zahara of the Tuna) affords some of the celebrated spots to pattern the dish: Restaurant Antonio Zahara. The trendy decor is massive on blonde wooden, caramel banquettes and assertion lighting, with floor-to-ceiling home windows framing the swaying dune grasses and pounding surf past. Have your tuna salted, grilled, spiced with wakame seaweed or served as deliciously tender sashimi. Oysters, lobster, tiger prawns and the shoreline’s fabled Retinto steak additional improve the menu. Mains from €20 (£17).

2. Saddle up at sundown on Playa de El Palmar

There could be few sights as evocative as a horse galloping alongside a seashore, hooves kicking up sand or splashing by the shallows cinematically. This is a typical sight as late afternoon bleeds into early night on this enormous sandy strand that extends south from the charming whitewashed city of Conil de la Frontera. The beneficiant dimensions of the seashore make it a well-liked alternative with the close by Cortijo Mangueta stables, which affords a spread of excursions, experiences and classes. New to horse-riding? Join a relaxed, 90-minute guided trot alongside the sands. Those who’re extra skilled ought to go for the two.5-hr sundown route, throughout which riders can gallop at numerous factors beneath the watchful eye of the skilled instructors. A strip of dunes separates the sand from the lone coast street, which is lined with surf shacks and hip seashore bars which are excellent for a post-ride sundowner. An hour’s journey begins from €50 (£43).

3. Hike La Breña y Marismas del Barbate Natural Park

The second-largest coastal reserve in southern Spain, spanning round 19sq miles, La Breña y Marismas del Barbate Natural Park showcases the perfect of the Costa de la Luz: peace, pure magnificence and stirring seascapes. It’s finest tackled at a leisurely tempo from the normal fishing city of Barbate, or hilltop Vejer de la Frontera. Trails are effectively outlined and the flora is mesmerising, with carpets of wildflowers shaded by tightly knit umbrella pines, and juniper forest merging with fig timber and seagrass meadows. A serious avian freeway runs by (or reasonably above) this space, as a whole bunch of hundreds of birds migrate between continents. Keep your eyes peeled for jackdaws, kestrels and even the odd peregrine falcon or sun-blockingly-broad griffon vulture. The park’s coastal strip is especially spectacular, with sheer-sided, 328ft-high cliffs falling away to the raging surf.

4. Make the pilgrimage to Cape Trafalgar

One solely must look at a map to know why a lot martial historical past has performed out alongside this shoreline over the centuries. It’s the crossroads of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean; Europe and Africa. One of probably the most consequential of clashes was the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, when Admiral Lord Nelson went toe to toe, canon to canon with the mixed French and Spanish fleets off the headland from which the battle is known as. It’s a richly atmospheric spot, outlined by the 112ft-high lighthouse that rises from the buttery-yellow dunes. Stare out to sea and picture the rigorously orchestrated carnage of the 60-ship battle, during which Nelson — standing proud on his 104-gun flagship, HMS Victory — masterminded an inconceivable victory however was fatally wounded within the course of. Look out, too, for the stays of a watchtower constructed by Philip II within the sixteenth century to defend the world from Berber pirates.

5. Explore the wetlands of the Bay of Cádiz

For centuries, the product of the sprawling salt pans in what’s now the Bay of Cádiz Natural Park powered Spain’s maritime exploration. Seawater could be directed into massive, shallow basins utilizing a system of channels and tide gates, evaporation by solar and wind would expose the salt and this might be used to protect meals for transcontinental voyages. Refrigeration has lengthy since rendered such pans redundant however echoes of the business are all over the place on this protected, unerringly flat pure park simply south of Cádiz. Bike trails and strolling paths thread by the panorama, linked by a number of arched foot bridges. Rent a motorbike in Cádiz or San Fernando, which overlooks the wetlands, and discover an space that’s grow to be certainly one of Andalucia’s most vital ornithological hotbeds, with an estimated 50,000 aquatic birds, starting from sandpipers and godwits to flamingos and avocets.

6. Take a ship journey to Rota

If you’re travelling up the coast within the route of Portugal, you’ll discover that the Costa de la Luz involves an abrupt and dramatic halt at Cádiz. Once an island, town is now surrounded nearly solely by sea, with a slender causeway to the south and the huge Bay of Cádiz yawning open to the north. It’s no penance, nevertheless; the mandatory ferry trip throughout the shimmering bay to the beach-lined peninsular city of Rota, as a way to proceed your journey, is a scenic delight. The brief crossing affords a uncommon and putting perspective of historic Cádiz, its skyline punctuated by church domes and watchtowers, simply as it might have appeared to retailers and seafarers all these centuries in the past. The ferry solely prices a number of euros takes a bit over half an hour — a journey that, with the solar glowing on the water and the ocean breeze in your face, slips by far too quick.