A small bay of fine white sand with a restaurant on an island you walk to over a wooden bridge. The family beach of the south-west, and quietly one of its prettiest.
Checking the water.
Sunrise 07:42 · sunset 19:41 today at Camp de Mar.
Every other beach on this coast is rock and ladders. Camp de Mar is the one with actual sand, shallow water that stays calm because the bay faces south and the headlands wrap around it, and a scene that is families in the morning, long lunches at two, and nobody after six. It is ten minutes from the port and feels like a different island.
The thing you will remember is s'Illeta: a lump of rock forty metres out with a restaurant on top, reached by a wooden footbridge. It has been there for more than seventy years. You eat paella with your feet almost in the water while kids fish for crabs off the rocks below you. It is not the best food in Andratx. It is the best table.
The headland to the east, Cap Andritxol, has a sixteenth-century watchtower at the end of an hour's walk through pines. Go at five, sit on the tower for the sunset over Dragonera, and walk back with a torch. That is the whole day.
Sand still cool, water like glass, the beach to yourselves. The bar at the back does coffee.
Kids to the rocks under the bridge with a bucket. Crabs, small fish, sea urchins to look at and not touch.
Lunch on the islet. Book a table on the sea side. Lobster paella for the table, or the sea bass.
Back to the towels, or the walk out to the Cap Andritxol tower starts from the east end of the beach.
Sunset from the tower, or from the rocks at the west end of the bay. The light turns the whole bay pink.
On the islet, over the bridge. Since the 1950s. Lobster paella, whole sea bass, grilled octopus. Honest numbers: 4.3 from 8,500 reviews, 30 to 80 euros a head, and almost every review is in English or German. So no, this is not where Andratx eats. It is where Andratx takes visitors, and the table is still the best on the coast. Book the sea side, ask for shade at two.
The village bar on the road up from the beach, not on the sand. Plastic chairs, a yellow awning, a fan on the wall, and the locals eat here. 4.5 from 300 reviews, ten to twenty a head. Grilled fish, squid, padrón peppers and pizza in the evening, open until half past ten, and a guitar some summer nights. Half the price of the islet and twice as real.
Jonny's beach club: on the sand at Camp de Mar, feet in the sand, cocktails, live music some nights, five corners from sunbeds to a chill-out. You eat here too: sushi, croquetas, the grill, 4.3 on Maps from more than seven hundred people, thirty to eighty a head, open every day from eleven to eleven. The move: book the teppanyaki table and get the full chef show; the chef cooks in front of you and drinks more beer than you do. Ask us and we book it.
The chiringuito on the sand. Mojitos and sangria are good, the food is not, and the reviews say so: 3.9 from 50. Drinks only.
Jonny’s secret one. Follow the road west through Camp de Mar to the viewpoint where it ends, then the path down towards the tower. A pocket of clear water in the rocks, no name on the map, nobody on it. Water shoes, the rocks are sharp. Say nothing.
A watchtower from the 1580s at the tip of the headland, built to spot Barbary pirates. The best sunset walk on this coast.
Up the road behind the beach, a wall to sit on and the whole bay below. Locals call it after Tomás Harris, the British art dealer and wartime spy who lived here. Look west.
Eighteen holes up the valley behind the beach, hard and pretty, 4.1 on Maps, opens at eight. Book tee times through your page and we handle the buggy.
Back to the harbour for the evening walk and the Capri ice cream.
Coming to Andratx? Tell us your dates. We write your week around places like Camp de Mar, with the tables and the boat booked if you want them. Free, and a person answers.
Tell us your dates