Did you know you can go to the beach in Winter in Spain? Is Playa de La Concha Europe's best beach?

5 Deciembre 2016

Playa de La Concha

Had we suddenly dropped our holiday and jetted off to warmer climes? Nope. Still San Sebastian. In December. Winter. Who hasn’t dreamed of going a European beach in the middle of winter? As far as life goals goes it would have to be at the brim of my bucket list. Okay, maybe I’m being just a tad sarcastic. It would be more accurate to say the thought of going to a European beach in winter hadn’t ever crossed my mind. So it was on fairly mild day of 14 degrees, mild for European winter, mild even for a Melbourne winter, we found ourselves at Playa de La Concha. Concha Beach. It wasn’t as cold and bleak as it looked. The cold afternoon sun did give the beach a nice golden glow.

Concha has been called Europe’s best beach. It’s nice. It really is. We’re Australian so we seem to think we know what makes a good beach. As far as European beaches go it was the best we’ve ever visited. For one it has sand. Not that stony pebbly rubbish you find on the Riviera. So big tick in favour of Concha.

I guess in the summertime at Concha it would be a different story. I doubt you can see the sand for the people then. That’s why we came to Spain in the winter. To avoid crowds. Still, I didn’t expect we’d hit the beach for a swim though.

In the middle of winter there were only a few hardy souls out walking dogs or strolling along the beach. And us. I’ll be honest here. Michelle and the kids were very keen to go down to the sand and the water. I was… reluctant. I muttered and moaned about pushing a pram across he sand, the cold, and how this was only delaying us from pintxos. I whinged a little. As soon as the kids went near the water their clothes got wet so we stripped them down to their undies and they had a bloody good play in the freezing water and on the sand. It was like they couldn’t feel the cold. The kids are made of sterner stuff than me. Exhilaration and adrenaline do keep the cold at bay for a while but in the end when Brandy started turning blue it was time the call it a day as far as the beach goes. The sun was setting and a light breeze was kicking up and the temperature were turning more wintry. Wintry even by European standards let alone Australian.

The kids were finally feeling the cold so we bundled them both into the pram, covered them in the driest of their clothes and jackets, and headed back to our apartment to get warm before hitting the pintxos bars again. The beach is a nice enough diversion but the main game was always the pintxos.