Montgrí, Medes Islands and Baix Ter Natural Park

Montgrí, Medes Islands and Baix Ter Natural Park tickets and tours: which one to book

This natural park on the Costa Brava, in Catalonia, about an hour and three quarters north of Barcelona and forty-five minutes from Girona and its airport, brings together three quite different things: a bare limestone massif crowned by a castle, a group of tiny islands famous among divers all over Europe, and the marshy mouth of the river Ter. The base for the sea is the resort of L'Estartit, whose harbour faces the Medes Islands a mile offshore. No one may land on the islands, and the number of divers and boats is controlled by permit, so that everything is arranged through the licensed centres and boat companies on the quay: try-dives for complete beginners in the sheltered shallows, which need no experience, guided snorkelling trips of an hour and a half or two hours, and boat dives for certified divers at a dozen named sites with a daily limit on numbers, to be booked well ahead in summer;

glass-bottomed and catamaran cruises circle the islands and continue north along the wild cliffs of the Montgrí coast, entering sea caves and passing through the great rock arch of La Foradada, with a swimming stop in a cove; and kayak and paddleboard tours explore the same coast under their own power. Dive centres in L'Escala, at the northern end of the massif, offer introductory dives along the Montgrí cliffs. The land is free and open: the classic walk climbs from the town of Torroella de Montgrí to the castle on the summit, about an hour up a stony, shadeless path, and other marked trails lead across the plateau to the hidden coves of Cala Pedrosa and Cala Ferriol, and through the dunes, lagoons and rice fields of the Baix Ter.

Visiting Montgrí, Medes Islands and Baix Ter Natural Park: what you will see

The Parc Natural del Montgrí, les Illes Medes i el Baix Ter was created in 2010, uniting under one administration about 8,200 hectares, of which some 2,000 are sea. The Medes are seven islets and a few reefs, the last outcrop of the Montgrí massif, which were the haunt of pirates in the Middle Ages, carried a fort and then a lighthouse, and were heavily fished, and their red coral plundered, until fishing was banned around them in 1983 and a marine reserve declared in 1990. The recovery since is one of the best-documented success stories of marine protection in the Mediterranean, comparable with Port-Cros and Scandola: large dusky groupers, almost extinct on this coast forty years ago, now number in the hundreds and approach divers with curiosity, together with shoals of barracuda, gilt-head and white bream, dentex, corb, eagle rays, moray and conger eels, octopuses and lobsters, among meadows of posidonia seagrass, walls covered with red and yellow gorgonian sea fans and precious red coral, and caves and tunnels that pierce the islands, such as the Dofí and the Vaca.

The abundance owes something to the river Ter, which enters the sea just to the south and fertilises the water. Above the surface, the islands hold one of the largest colonies of yellow-legged gulls in the Mediterranean, with shags, herons and egrets. The Montgrí massif, which from the south is said to resemble a sleeping bishop, is a block of pale Cretaceous limestone, dry, stony and covered in low garrigue, rosemary, kermes oak and Aleppo pine, rising to 309 metres at the Montplà; on the summit of Santa Caterina, at 303 metres, stands the castle of Montgrí, a perfectly square fortress with round corner towers begun by King James II of Aragon in 1294, during his quarrel with the counts of Empúries, and abandoned, never finished, in 1301, with a view from its walls over the whole Empordà plain to the Pyrenees, the bay of Roses and the islands. The coast between L'Estartit and L'Escala is one of the last undeveloped stretches of the Costa Brava. The Baix Ter holds lagoons, dunes, reedbeds and rice paddies.

Montgrí, Medes Islands and Baix Ter Natural Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open at all times, and the dive centres and boats operate mainly from April to October. The water is warmest, 22 to 24 degrees, and clearest from July to September, which is also when places on the dive boats are scarcest; June and September combine good conditions with fewer people. The tramuntana, the violent north wind of the Empordà, can blow for days at a time in any season, cancelling boats and clearing the air, and the easterly llevant brings swell.

Climb Montgrí castle early or late, never at midday in summer, and carry water. Allow a day for the sea and another for the land. Torroella de Montgrí is six kilometres inland, the Greek and Roman ruins of Empúries at L'Escala twenty minutes north, the medieval villages of Pals and Peratallada fifteen minutes south, and Girona forty-five minutes.