Barceló Portinatx

What we were paying for at Barceló Portinatx was the location, and the location comes down to twenty metres: the distance from the hotel to the sand of Portinatx beach, at the foot of a cove on Ibiza's quiet north coast. The hotel climbs the slope behind it in white blocks, stepped back in tiers of balconies, with pines growing between them and the sea showing in the gaps. Between the blocks is a curved pool set into a broad wooden deck, white loungers drawn up round it in rows and canopied daybeds along the far side. It is adults only, from eighteen.

Ours was a Superior Room with Sea View, generic but fine, which is as much as a room needs to be with the beach that close. We came in July, in a very hot spell, and the pool let us down. The hotel does not heat its pools. That week it did not need to: the water was as warm as a bath, and there was no cooling off to be had in it. Other guests' reviews come back again and again to the staff, and their recurring complaint is the maintenance, down to broken USB ports.

The beach did better. The cove is good for swimming and snorkelling, with watersports for anyone who wants more out of it, and the mojito man mixed his cocktails there on the sand and delivered them, strong: a DIY operation, and just right. The hotel's more organised answer is Magical Portinatx, its restaurant and beach bar at the foot of the cove, with traditional cooking, DJ sessions from June to the start of September, and a bill of its own, since it is not part of the all-inclusive rate.

Beyond the cove, the north is for driving round, though the hotel has no parking for guests, so a hire car will need somewhere else to spend the night. The next coves, Cala Xarraca and Benirràs, are a short drive. On Saturdays the Las Dalias market at Sant Carles puts out more than three hundred stalls; it started in 1985 with five. Ibiza Town is about forty minutes away by car, and its clubs with it: near enough to go, and far enough not to hear them.