Flying really isn’t my thing. The security checks, the queues, the delays (especially with Ryanair) and the possibility of turbulence. Not a fan.
But when I heard that the world’s best beach was just an hour’s flight away, I knew I had no excuse but to pluck up some willpower and head out. Situated on Sardinia’s east coast, about a two-and-a-half hour drive from Olbia, Cala Goloritzé was ranked as the winner out of 50 beaches from around the world by The World’s 50 Best Beaches (very original name, I know).
The list was compiled and whittled down by judges, beach ambassadors and their in-house team, who spent days scouting shores across the globe. If that doesn’t sound like a dream job, I don’t know what does. In their opinion, Cala Goloritzé beat locations in Greece, the Seychelles, Mexico and the Maldives.
The winner was also one of two Italian entrants to make the list, with the other being La Pelosa in the north part of Sardinia. Apparently the beautiful beaches of Conero, Amalfi and Puglia didn’t cut the mustard. La Pelosa only managed 50th place – not bad considering the name means “the hairy”.
Landing in Olbia, I made my way down to Baunei, a little village in Nuoro province. The limestone hamlet perched on the slope of Monte Santo was everything I expected from the Sardinian countryside. There was no public transportation, no chain restaurants, villagers talking to one another in their local language (not Italian, but a Sardinian dialect called Limba de mesania). It was sleepy and, as it turns out, so was I.
Heading over to my hotel I was greeted by a member of staff named Antoni.
“What do you think about Cala Goloritzé being voted as the best beach in the world?” I ask him in Italian, my talents not stretching enough to speak the local language.
“It doesn’t surprise me, I think we’ve always known it to be,” he responds. “There are loads of beautiful beaches in Sardinia, but ours is out of this world.
“You have the blue, blue sea and the white pebbles that lots of other nice beaches have, but then you have all these limestone rocks full of trees that hug around it, so it feels like it’s just you and nature. You can’t see any building behind you or to the sides, only the clear water in front.”
He tells me the beach is also known as Aguglia beach, largely because of the eponymous limestone monolith towering above the beach’s coastline.
When I asked him whether he was worried the beach would be overcrowded with tourists because of the ranking, he said he isn’t as people usually have to reserve beaches in Sardinia and the capacity for Cala Goloritzé is 250.
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“It’s like a postcard and it’ll never be ruined by crowds,” he says. “It makes me proud to be from here.”
I read up beforehand that to get to the shore, you had the option of either a three-kilometre walk or taking a boat ride that stops 200 metres away, jumping off and swimming the rest of it. I opted for the former and set off on my adventure early in the morning.
The views of the water on the way up were something else. When I finally reached the beach, I marvelled at the raw natural beauty of it all. It was extraordinary and perhaps one of the most stunning beaches I had ever visited.
Was it the best? Well – I’d say the world is big. But maybe we will go with this for now.
Jessica Lionnel is a freelance journalist living in Rome
