Better to start from Girona, a wonderful city with a medieval core of cobbled alleys, high stone buildings and unrushed pavement cafés. From here several small and charming coves, miraculously unscathed by mass tourism, are within easy reach.

Heading south from the French border, a coast road winds around a few rather uninspiring shingle beaches, with small restaurants and seasonal campsites and the pleasant but unexceptional coastal towns of Colera and Llançà, but gets more exciting when it loops through the Cap de Creus Parc Natural to the village of Cadaqués. With tiered whitewashed houses set around a shingle beach, Cadaqués was made fashionable by Picasso and Chagall in the 1920s, was later adopted as home by Salvador Dalí and still retains a raffish, alternative atmosphere.

Tiered below the distinctive hilltop church of Santa Maria, art shops and boutiques are squeezed amongst narrow alleys, with a number of lively bars and restaurants attracting a diverse clientele of expatriate drifters and wannabe artists.

Partly because it can only be reached by a single narrow road threading through a National Park, development has been kept firmly at bay, which means accommodation, in season, can be hard to find: book ahead to secure a space either amongst the surrealist memorabilia of the central Hotel La Residencia (00 34 972 258312, www.laresidencia.net) or further along the shore at the Hotel Rocamar (258150, www.rocamar.com) with its tennis courts and pool.

South of here there’s a sort of hinterland, half-developed and half-spoiled but not completely over-run. The first major resort is Roses, friendly enough but a little large for my taste, that marks the northern end of the Gulf of Roses. Pass by Empuriabrava, designed and built around a network of canals in the 1960s as an ideal new type of town for the wealthy but which now, although there’s a certain charm in the multicoloured (and compulsory) beach huts of the Banys s’Agora, fails to appeal to most land animals.

Do stop, however, at the important Roman and Greek ruins of Empúries, fenced off from the superb and almost deserted beach that reaches down to the nearby town of L’Escala. The old harbour district is charming, set around a small beach with a number of interesting restaurants (a typical dish was rabbit cooked at full stretch, as if flash-fried while running past the kitchen, and draped with slivers of anchovy) backed by good local shopping streets.

Immediately to the south, development starts to kick in again, with apartment blocks looming over the shore like some sort of monstrous growth. This is, however, as nothing compared with L’Estartit, further south, with a beachfront Fun Pub advertising cheap pints and, no doubt, countless other horrors. With several campsites, however, this can be good for families and an economical base to explore.

After crossing the River Ter the beaches continue with Platja de Pals. A beach that might otherwise be dominated by apartment blocks is overshadowed, instead, by serried ranks of huge red aerial towers that once broadcast Radio Liberty, a voice from America drawling its message against communism in the Eastern bloc. Retained, perhaps, for some future propaganda offensive they now overlook a sporty, young crowd who are apt to jog, throw balls, run about and generally behave in a faintly tiring manner. This is no time to slow, however: things are about to get better.

At this point the coast crinkles into the steeply shelving pine-clad perfection of the Massif de Begur, pink pine-clad boulders shouldering down to small and intimate sandy coves, reached by narrow winding lanes. First is Sa Riera, an unpretentious village cuddling a generous beach, with a few unfussy bars and restaurants and a seasonal population of Catalan second-homers.

Next to the south is Cala d’Aiguafreda, so sheer the beach almost disappears, but popular with divers. Further on is Sa Tuna, perhaps the most beautiful of all, with pine-green hills dropping into emerald waters and cradling a small sheltered beach. Of the two restaurants, one attracts gourmets from far and wide, but its guest-house accommodation isn’t anything special. Platja Fonda, Fornells and Aiguablava — with its very own parador, the Hotel Aigua Blava (622058, www.aiguablava.com) — continue to the south.

Limited by their setting, the accommodation in these coves is rarely wonderful or wonderful value. All, however, are within ten minutes drive of the inland village of Begur, a fortified hilltop settlement of immense charm — and at least one immensely charming hotel, the Hotel Aiguaclara (622905, www.aiguaclara.com). This village-centre palace has been beautifully restored, with eight guest rooms decorated with colourwashed walls and stylish, minimal antique furnishings, and a busy restaurant below.

More coves are reached from the larger town of Palafrugell, five kilometres (three miles) to the south. Perhaps the best is Tamariú, another favourite with postcard vendors, whose promenade, crescenting around a coarse-sand bay, is known for its restaurants. Many visitors here are dropping into their holiday homes, but lesser mortals can find a foothold in the Hotel Tamariú (620031, www.tamariu.com).

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