Sofia & Marc — Costa Brava, 9 days

“We were going to book a hotel in Barcelona. Instead we woke up in a cove no map had a name for.”

We almost didn’t do it. We had the hotel booked — four nights in Barcelona, two nights in Sitges, flights home from El Prat. Sensible. Proven. Exactly what we’d done three times before.

Then Marc found the van on a Thursday evening and we cancelled the hotels on Friday morning.

The cove we woke up in on day four — we still haven’t found it on any map. We drove down a track that looked like it was going somewhere, and it did. A tiny curve of sand, completely empty, with a fishing boat pulled up on the rocks. We stayed two nights.

That’s the thing nobody tells you about van travel: the best places don’t have names yet.