Le Dune Piscinas

When it comes to Sardinia, the first thing most people think of is the glamorous Costa Smeralda in the north-east, which has famously been a playground for billionaires since the Sixties. But I was here to see a different costa, also named for the colour green, but the polar opposite in every way imaginable, and not just due to co-ordinates. My destination was Le Dune Piscinas on the far less-visited Costa Verde, along Sardinia’s south-western shores. 
 
Piscinas is the name of the comune and the ‘dune’ bit refers to the otherwordly landscapes the surrounding sandy mounds give this part of the island — it’s called Sardinia’s Little Sahara for a reason. Behind the dunes, some of which are as high as 60 metres, sits the hotel. 
 
For inexplicable reasons, I had booked a flight to former capital Cagliari that required a 3am call time, something I’ve successfully managed to avoid since the Noughties, when the advent of low-cost airlines and its ensuing heyday (if you can call it that) seemed to require minibreaks to feature hideous pre-dawn flights departing, more often than not, London Stansted or Luton.  
 
But it’s always worth being surrounded by that many members of the public under airport strip-lighting at 5am when you finally step off a plane into Mediterranean sunshine by mid-morning. The miracle of air travel never gets old — Mama Smith and I had touched down in southern Sardinia by 10am.  
 
We picked up our hire car and headed out into the countryside, driving along flat roads ringed by mountains in the distance, before we started our ascent into more winding tracks towards the island’s south-west coast. The drive started to get interesting around Ingurtosu, where we’d been warned to programme our sat-nav accordingly and advised against taking the 4WD-requiring route via Portu Maga, which would have involved crossing a ford. 
 
As we reach the abandoned mining community in this part of Sardinia, we start to pass relics by the roadside — including the ruins of the Laveria Brassey mine, built into the valley, where extracted stones were washed by women and children. The ghost town is now a Unesco Geopark.  
 
The bendy, steep descent narrows, as the track gets dustier and bumpier. Our spotless hire car is already covered in dust. Soon enough, there’s nowhere else to go as we’ve hit sand, actual shore — and a barricade. How I went too far when there’s literally water in front of us, I’m not sure. A quick rev and wheel spin in the sand, and we’re in Le Dune Piscinas’ carpark, being greeted and shown into the dimly lit reception.  
 
There are remnants of the mining industry everywhere, including ancient phones whose purpose someone from Gen Z might struggle to identify. The main building the hotel is in was once a mining warehouse, storing the minerals after they arrived on wagons from the Laveria Brassey, until they were shipped out by sea. There’s a library where you can learn more about the history of the region or just linger under some potent air-conditioning while attempting to look cultured and studious. 
 
Upstairs, our room had cool white interiors and a balcony at either end. Some options are more like mini villas, with their own pool at the edge of the sand. After we’ve unpacked, Mama Smith and I have a light lunch on the beach, where every room has its own set of sunloungers assigned. She braves a swim, but the red flag is up and the waves are huge, so I stay put with my poke bowl and book.  
 
That evening, we try the more casual of the hotel’s restaurants, Il Ginepro, enjoying my all-time favourite pasta dish, spaghetti alle vongole, in prime position for sunset at the edge of the beach.  
 
Le Dune’s proximity to the beach (ie right on it) encourages us to rise early the next morning, and we walk up and down the curving shoreline before breakfast, in search of the ruined wagons that still sit in the sand. It’s mid-July, but the coast is deserted. 
 
If it wasn’t high summer and so hot, we’d have been tempted to explore the open-air mining museum of Ingurtosu, but for once, I let myself cave in to my urges to stay sunlounger-bound. I do leave for yoga on the beach with instructor Francesca, once the heat has cooled off a little at 7pm, saluting the sun as it starts to go down. As we wrap up in happy-baby pose, it’s surreal to be staring up at the sky with the dunes seemingly on top of it.  
 
Then it’s dinner at Rosso Tramonto, which is surely in the bidding race for a Michelin star, if just for the crockery. This includes glassware shaped like sea urchins and baby-shape-sorting games. The restaurant’s right next door to the trattoria, with the tables under a pergola and even closer to the sand. We dine on lobster with bufala mozzarella, celeriac and horseradish, langoustine with fennel and apple, and red mullet in a tomato and olive sauce. 
 
The next day, the — sadly not mine — super-yachts were calling and we drove north to the Costa Smeralda to gawp at the glitz and glamour for ourselves. But I was grateful to have seen an undiscovered, less-showy side of Sardinia first — especially one as wild and deserted as Piscinas and the Costa Verde.