Beach and Bike Day in Barcelona

We booked a bike tour for our group in June 2015, and I would never do that again. We've been on bike tours in several European cities including Munich, Paris, Prague, Barcelona, Florence - and Barcelona felt very unsafe being on some of those heavily traveled roads. Yes, the beach that we biked to looked very much like the picture in the link.

I agree with Tim.
As someone who is from Barcelona, I have to say that the bike/segway tours are quite the annoyance. You always see them going dangerously fast in the congested sidewalks next to the beach. I also believe that the city government is enacting regulations to curb this problem (as there have been a few minor accidents). Also most of the restaurants you find along the Barceloneta beach will be catering to tourists (and not in a good way - high prices/low quality).

There are better beaches just outside of the city. One is called Platja del Garraf, which is just a short 15 min train ride south of Barcelona. You will find only locals at this beach. There are also many good places to eat nearby. La Cúpula is one such place, it has commanding views of the Mediterranean and a pretty good Fideuà, which is like a Paella but with short noodles instead of rice.

Thanks Tim and Carlos. We do not wish to take a bike tour, we want to do it on our own...

This is just what we were looking for:
"There are better beaches just outside of the city. One is called Platja del Garraf, which is just a short 15 min train ride south of Barcelona. You will find only locals at this beach. There are also many good places to eat nearby. La Cúpula is one such place, it has commanding views of the Mediterranean and a pretty good Fideuà, which is like a Paella but with short noodles instead of rice."

However, the closest bike rental is in the next town (Casteldefels), and the bike route from there on google goes bizarely inland, up a hill, and back down. However it looks doable, the train stop is Platja de Castelldefels, and the bike rental place is a 2 minute walk from the train station. Do you think, Carlos, that it would be a pleasant bike ride from Casteldefels to Garraf? Is there a dedicated bike trail do you think? It says 6 km with 50 meter elevation...

I wouldn't recommend Garraf beach at all (and it's 38 minutes on train from city centre, not 15 minutes) and definitely do not recommend cycling from Casteldefells.
A much better option: Vilanova i la Geltrú is 45 minutes south on train from Barcelona. It has a few beautiful beaches, that are practically empty (especially compared to Sitges, and beach towns north of Barcelona). The town is also lovely, with a good selection of restaurants, plus a gorgeous 0.5 mile long tree-lined Rambla that runs from the harbour up into the town. Sitges is nice, and very pretty, but very crowded with tourists, whereas Vilanova is laid back, and you'll get a great sense of Catalan / Spanish life.

Hey Joan, I have not had much experience with biking along the coast. My recommendation is from the perspective of someone who used to live in Barcelona rather than as a visitor, we usually just hopped on the train for a quick day at the beach at Garraf. I would also not recommend cycling from Casteldefells to Garraf, it is quite a curvy road with a lot of cars.

Vilanova is a nice little town to visit too, although I am not too sure about biking as most of the shoreline is dominated by a harbor rather than a beach.

If you would like just biking along a beach probably Casteldefells itself will be your most straightforward choice. It has a long flat Passeig Marítim that follows the beach for quite some distance. What is great is that all of these beach towns are connected via the train line, so if you are not a fan of Casteldefells you can continue down to Garraf for lunch, and then on to Sitges or Vilanova, which are more south.

There's no "man made" beach in La Barceloneta.... the beach there has existed for hundreds of years; if anything, in 1716 (yes 1716) it was "restructured" when the first neighbours started to build their homes, and lately in the 1990s it has been "revamped".

In any case, yes, at the high of summer is pretty full -as are most other beaches in the coast of Catalonia.

Enric, thanks for the correction. I could have sworn Rick Steves describes Barceloneta as a man made peninsula...

Because RS describes biking the beaches as a "delight", (and because we have a tour booked to take us to Dali's museum in Cadaques), I think instead of training to another place, we will try to find a bike rental place and take our chances along the beach. Hopefully we'll find a good place for lunch as well. We will stay on the bike path as well. Thanks for all the responses.

Joan, if you were to "drop the bike idea", you might like something else instead: our coast here in Catalonia is full of hiking trails, some of which run along the seaside. While many are located in an area that you can't really visit on a day escapade from Barcelona, there are bits and pieces one can consider.

One of these, is the stretch from Blanes to Tossa de Mar. Blanes is the first major town in the Costa Brava, it's reachable by train from Barcelona in a 90' journey. From there, there's a bit of the Mediterranean track GR92 running alongside the coast to Tossa de Mar. It's a nice 21km walk which can be made in a little over 6h passing thru some amazing caves and landscapes where, of course, you can stop and swim. Here the technical details of the route.

Obviously one doesn't have to walk the whole trail, one can turn around and trackback at any time. If you, however, decided to walk to Tossa de Mar, besides being a very picturesque city -with your own castle on the beach!-, you can take a bus to return directly to Barcelona -albeit the last one departs in the afternoon!... or simply do it the other way around, a morning bus to Tossa, walk the trail to Blanes and then you have trains every 30' to Barcelona until 9:55pm.

There are many more trails, with even more amazing landscapes, but these are located in areas with no train access, only bus... and given the schedules, you'd probably need an overnight.

Enjoy!

Regarding the "man-made" beaches, just to clarify, the coastline in the city of Barcelona has moved back several times since pre-historic times. In the Middle Ages, the coastline was located approximately in today's Passeig de Colom (Columbus Ave.). There even was an island, called Maians, where today is the History Museum of Catalonia (btw, definitively a must for any history buff) which often was used by smugglers and pirates.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, the natural port -today's Port Vell (Old Port)- was enlarged by constructing several breakwaters. These provoked a greater accumulation of sand in the area of today's Barceloneta neighbourhood creating the beaches as we know now. Later in the 20th century, some works were made to re-structure access to the beaches.

This can be better visualized in this picture.

So... it was a natural process provoked by a man-made structure, but the beaches themselves were not man-made.

Enric, thanks so very much, very interesting. Such beautiful vistas on that hike too!

I'm in the camp who feels it's a stretch to call the beaches in Barcelona "beaches". They are man made (for the Olympics) and seem more like brown dirt on a dirty lake. There are crowds there on a summer day but it's far from ideal.

I personally would take a train north to the Costa Brava. There's a train station near the old Olympic Village (giant fish looking structure) that will take you along some nice little beach towns in under a 1/2 hour. The beaches in that area are coves with intermittent cliffs. I think beautiful.

Going south is a different kind of beach, bigger beaches without the same cliffs and coves. Sitges is it's own tourist trap. I haven't been to the other town that was suggested but it sounded nice.

I'm not much of a beach person. The Barcelona beaches are not the powder sugar sand that many find appealing. However, I didn't find the beaches "brown", and keeping in mind that they are right in a major city, I thought they were pretty and the area worth a trip. We found a lot of sea glass which was fun. The barceloneta was interesting for a little stroll. The area behind the strip of restaurants and bars had a lovely old church and it was an interesting place to walk.

For fine golden sand beaches, an escapade to Castelldefels or Sitges should do it. By commuting train, they're merely 30-45' south of Barcelona. The further north you go, the more coarse the sand and when you arrive at Costa Brava, in the northern part of Catalonia, the sand is really rough -in comparison, of course- and some coves don't even have sand but stones. South-bound, the sand is finer.

I will not bother to explain again the fact Barcelona beaches are not man-made, already did earlier. The waterfront was simply "revitalized" (=restructured), but the beaches had been there since long ago.

I personally like the fine golden sand, so I am not too fond of the sand in Barcelona either... but National Geographic chose these beaches as the Best Urban Beaches in the world in 2010 so they probably must have "something". However, I totally agree that in the high of summer they're impossible... far too many beach-goers!

Weren't we talking about la Barceloneta?

Anyway Bill, you are misinformed on this one. This, for example, was Camp de la Bota (today's Diagonal Mar) during the 1950s. And this was next to it, the "hood of Pequín" in 1906 located in today's Forum's beach and which has partially destroyed during the storm surges of 1932 and 1934. But again.. we're not gonna make a federal case out of this discussion, right?, LOL!... so I'll leave it here.

PS. Curiosity: the hood of shanties was known as "Barri de Pequín" (Peking's hood) because, in 1870, many Chinese migrants from the then Spanish colony of Philippines settled here.

This is fascinating discussion. Enric, your pictures are incredible, what an improvement has been made!
And Bill Sinclair, I blame you for losing at least an hour wandering your amazing website. Got some great tips! As a restaurant owner, I was appalled at the history of the menu del dia, imagine the arrogance of deciding how many calories your population required! Thank you for your contributions. Hope you don't mind me posting the link, because everyone should read this, including your response to Isa in the comments section.
http://billsinclair.es/fd-2/#more-1438

Update:
We had a wonderful time, we rented a tandem bicycle from Barcelona Rent A Bike, close to the beach. We started at the W hotel, then meandered along the scalloped beaches for about 10 miles roundtrip on the excellent bike path, stopping to wander out onto the different piers, to watch volleyball, the guys at the skate park, etc. It was hot (we wished we had worn our swimsuits after all, but chickened out, darn!), we grabbed a beer from a vendor, and had a great time people watching and pedaling. After our rental time was up, we returned the bike and walked back to the beach (just a couple of blocks) and enjoyed a reward lunch at Bo Kaap, a waterside restaurant.
We also stopped and dipped our feet in the water, which was gorgeous and cool but not cold. Yes it was gravelly, but we expected that. And by the way, it sure LOOKED man made!
Highly recommend this activity for beach lovers!

Thanks for the update, glad you guys had a good time! :)