Booked almost at random, based on the look of the place from internet searching after finding it on Holiday-Rentals and because we could get 6 of us there from Birmingham to Barcelona for a reasonable price during peak holidays.

Delighted with our choice all-round. A 90+ minutes drive South from Barcelona along an easy toll motorway with some lovely views of the Med. Then 10 minutes drive from L’Ampolla itself, past some quiet residential areas. The property is a complex of around 50 houses and a 4 star hotel sharing a small peninsular with a few dozen private villas. We chose a 3 bedroom house, in a rough circle around an excellent shared pool in beautifully maintained gardens. Other houses extended beyond the pool area but were less desireable as a result. Our house, like many others (but not all) had a private hedged garden opening onto the shared lawns, not 10 metres from the pool’s edge. Houses on one side of the pool had their gardens facing the street and the Med beyond but for me seemed less well appointed than ours.

Nice touches included a substantial tiled patio area with a range of furniture and small wall sections in the garden boundaries between hedges which included a fixed garden table and bench seating and an area for barbecueing.

The pool(s) were the highlight. A circle split by a boardwalk bridge, with a good sized ‘kids’ pool on one side with decent depths to around 1.2metres, then a 2 metre drop into the adult pool with depths of up to 4 metres, making for some outstanding jumping and diving opportunities. Both were enwrapped by lovely lawns with occasional olive tress for shade and some fixed park bench seating. Most of our two weeks was spent in the water or lounging on the lawns watching the kids.

The house itself was over two floors with a roof terrace, though most others were three floors and apparently slightly larger as a result. Ours was perfectly adequate for a family of six with two bathrooms, both with very effective showers and a full size tub in one. Comfortable beds, a balcony out front of the main bedroom, good sofas and full size open plan kitchen finished the package.

The hotel a short walk away through the gardens was very open and modern, with lots of covered sitting areas and good use of glass to give a light and upmarket feel. Generally shaped to face into the entertainment area of the numerous pools, tennis courts, kids play areas etc. We found the pools a bit soulless and returned to our ‘private’ pool after one visit. Just a personal view with four small kids but otherwise they were perfectly pleasant with partial views of the sea, loads of sunlounger space and an unusual set up of a number of conjoined rectangular pools which the kids enjoyed switching between. Also, despite being high season, the pool area was surprisingly quiet – but only in terms of foot traffic. Sadly, the eurofunk/pop trend has not gone away since my last Med stay many moons ago. Whether a couple of dozen middle aged French visitors and their selection of teenage kids really want to hear ‘Boom Bang a Bang’ type muzak as they recline in the sun seems a moot point as they seem to be destined to get it all day long.

The hotel also has a full spa which my partner used and enjoyed and, I believe, a rooftop pool for those staying in ‘VIP’ rooms. We didn’t use the restaurants but they looked very pleasant, again, very light and open leading to a feel almost of a central atrium area on two levels off from which all the facilities could be accessed. No real sense of a hotel ‘bar’ as such, rather than a couple of café bars serving the common areas generally.

Two shingle beaches could be accessed on foot within five minutes, one either side of the peninsular. The better sand beaches, two that we used, were 5 and 10 minutes by car on the way to town. Both were excellent, smallish coves with great sand, simple facilities, and rocky outcrops at each end to give the kids something to climb over, hunt for crabs in or allow the older folk a bit of hopeful fishing. We did some very good snorkelling in 1-3 metres of water, just metres off the beach.

The town of L’Ampolla has plenty for the quiet family or couple break. Perhaps 6 restaurants looking onto the marina and a few others dotted along the coast road or a block or two off the seafront. No more than a few gift / tourist shops, a half dozen relaxed café bars and a couple of adequate ‘supermarkets’. All very close together and accessible, but shopping-wise not of any use for strolling around. Just simple, practical shops to supply a holiday and pick up a couple of gifts. There are lots of options of day trips, to Portaventura theme parks, water parks, Tortosa etc but we just threw our plans out of the window and chilled out.

Couple of notes for the picky. Yes, you will need a car to even get to a shop and, no, there aren’t many Brits or English speakers around. This is a Spanish location with a large number of French visitors. You will need to learn a few basic words but to be honest, most restaurants had some element of English on the menus.

Catalan Ways, the letting agents, were outstanding. Excellent English speaking service before and during our visit. A very useful arrival pack including wine (though the previous residents’ failure to get very far into a bottle of gin was also welcome!) and some very useful restaurant guides and free wine offers that were honoured wherever we went. Of the restaurants, we used a few and were not disappointed. Like many ‘non-touristy’ resorts the restaurants were very similar with staple Spanish menus so location and service were often the key features. Special word for ‘Perales’ on both counts. For the best location, a short walk down a rocky path, across a small beach, then up some steps to dine beside the ocean overlooking a small cove. Take a torch for the walk back and for use as a blunt instrument when needed to attract attention from the particularly poor waitress who seems to be getting a reputation from what we can gather. Vanessa’s a ‘pizzeria’ disguised in a quiet residential area as a villa’s garden was a surprising treat. Lovely service in a very pretty garden and great thin pizza and salads for very sensible prices, including wines starting at 6 euros. Perfect for a stop off after an afternoon at Cap Roig beach, the pick of the beaches and only 100 metres from Vanessa’s.

Now all it needs is to keep this little gem a secret, so don’t go telling anyone about it!

We are a family with young children from Moscow, Russia. We've just returned from a month's stay in Les Oliveres. We rented a townhouse (casa 50) in the residential area that belongs to the hotel just accross a small road from the main building. We were the guests of the Catalanways company that own a number of houses there. The owners are a family from Ireland and we were amazed how friendly and open they were. A welcome complement basket was very lovely and allowed us to have an idea what wine and cheese we should buy during our long stay there (5-7 euro a bottle of lovely wine with rich taste which would cost in Moscow AT LEAST EUR 30). The kitchen was fully equipped with everything a cook (my wife :) would need. It was clean and some things (like kettle and some othe stuff) were brand new. (The only thing that they don't have is hair dryer, or we may be couldn't find it :)
Another thing which was also very helpful and gives credit to the owners was a big package of promotional materials about the area itself including the restaurants. And if you go to a recommended restaurant and show them the card of Catalanways they would treat you with a free bottle of wine and call you "amigo" during all your stay. This is the way to treat customers. :)

We came there with our 3 year old son and never regretted. There are two big playgrounds (one was just opposite our house and you would never believe what a great thing to relax in the patio watching your offspring enjoy himself in the playground near by!).

The pools are great. There are two pools in the residential complex and 7-8 or something like that in the hotel (2 minute walk).

Internet is in the hotel lobby. Free wifi if come with own laptop or 1 euro for 10 minutes in Internet cafe. But the last 10 days of our stay there were some problems with wi-fi and you would wait for an hour or more to get connected :( .

A car is really needed. To finalise, it is great for families with young children and elderly people because of atmosphere, the air, the seaside and great food. It is a unique combination of privacy in the house and closeliness of the hotel with all services that we are used to at hand, including spa and beauty parlor (which is important in the quest of making your wife happy if you stay there for a month :) We would certainly come there again.

My family and I stayed here in september-07, but we chose to rent an apartment rather than staying in the hotel itself. The apartments are just across a small road, and they are very nice and modern! You can choose from 2 floors or 3 floors apartment, all with sea view and you can use all the facilities in the hotel.
There are to pools and a large childrens playground close to the apartments, surrounded by a palmtrees and beautiful flowers in a very nice garden.
The apartments have 3 bedrooms with comfy beds, a nice livingroom with sliding doors to a small nice private garden, TV (with spanish channels), DVD player, kitchen with dishwasher, stove, fridge/freezer and micro, utility room with washing machine. The master bedroom has a terrace, and the 3 floor apartments have a second terrace. There is a private parking spot for each apartment.
The area is lovely, but very quiet, and you have to have a car. There are some nice restaurants in the "city centre" of L`Ampolla, about 3 kms from the hotel, and several restaurants offer "take away" food.
For shopping, drive north to Tarragona, a pretty large city approx 50 mins drive. Here you can find shopping malls of decent size. For "boutique" shopping, drive to the nice town Tortosa, approx 20 mins drive into the country side. For those who travels with children, in Tortosa you find a pretty large toy store, Gasco.
Areawise, nice and quiet, and approx 400 meters to the nearest beach. Here, under the shade of pine trees, there is a small cosy restaurant. Another 200 meters away, or 3 mins. by car, there is a beautiful white sandy beach.
We loved it, and would like to go back, but we recommend the apartments rather than the hotel itself.

We booked this hotel as my husband was doing a trail biking weekend which is based out of it. This is definitely not a four star hotel, more like 2 in some ways. We were unfortunately on half board but went out the second night as we just couldnt face eating there again.
i will sumarize our stay as follows;

Reception; Greeting non existent.no smile.no 'did you have a nice flight or did you find us easily ?'.nothing, gave us the key, just one despite there being two of us and we were left to go to the room ourselves.no porters.

Room; ok. beds comfy. no chairs to sit in. tiny tv. no remote (we discovered you had to hire them at reception). bathroom ok. towels dreadful.thin and small.this being a spa hotel i did expect nice shampoo and soap (we have stayed in lots of hotels all over the world and this always is the case), but what we got was a sachet of shampoo and tiny bars of soap. dreadful

Pools; these were nice. no lifeguard on duty despite hotel being full. no bar service out there either.

Spa. went to try it one day and the pool was full of small kids making noise so I didnt go in

Restaurant; oh dear. buffet for dinner and lunch. we expected lovely spanish food. we were bitterly dissappointed.cold food which should have been warm.which inc pork kebabs which were so dry you couldnt get them off the skewer. jammed as well. some waiters were nice. breakfast should have been nice, buit for instance they didnt even have fruit salad, just apples and oranges.warm food left for hours under lights. water and juice out of machines. this is not four star.

I should also point out that this hotel is out of the way but that is one of the reasons we choose it. the area is lovely, almond trees and olive trees. But we were the only english speaking people there. we did try to speak spanish to them but in general we were ignored. you have to present two tickets at reception to get beach towels (tiny) and then you have to line up each and every time (reception is always busy) to give them back and to get the tickets back. also only one towel per person. I was constantly ignored while standing in the queue and the reception person would deal with a spanish person even if I was next. In the end I just jumped the queue.

The corridors are tiled in tiles and very very noisy at night.time. the Spanish are not quiet when going to their rooms!

The biking was brilliant says my husband and we will probably go back
but will do it at mid week and will eat out all the time the next time! Its a pity