Cycling from Benicarlo to Peniscola

Peniscola old town 

After the shock of a rainy day on Friday we made the most of Saturday's glorious sunshine by taking our bicycles to the beach. Camping l'Orangeraie is a little inland, but it's only about a fifteen minute drive to the coast. We parked up just outside Benicarlo to do a cycle ride that Dave had planned along the seafront. There is a dedicated cycle path linking Benicarlo with Peniscola.

Initially bicycles have to share the road through the edge of town, but even on a Saturday morning there wasn't much traffic and Spanish car drivers are very good about giving cyclists a wide berth. I always feel far safer cycling on roads out here than I do in the UK. Soon though we saw the cycle path start up on the left pavement from where it continues for about five miles. Although the space is shared with pedestrians, the separate spaces are marked with white lines that were generally well observed. The coast is perfectly flat and we were lucky with only a light breeze so the cycling was a pleasure in both directions. The promenade was considerably busier with cyclists and pedestrians in the late morning. Returning mid-afternoon we practically had it all to ourselves.

Peniscola Castle behind an odd sculpture which may also be a fountain 

Looking up the hill to the castle 

Peniscola was a pleasant surprise as, although right down by the beach is built up with modern hotels and apartment blocks, the old town climbing the hill to the castle retains much of its charm. It's not such a steep climb as in Onda and we were both reminded of Mojacar pueblo although I couldn't say exactly what prompted me to make that connection. We didn't pay to go up the castle itself, preferring to explore the outer walls and the town itself. One street was overfilled with touristy tat shops, but the narrow residential streets are peaceful and pretty and almost all surfaced with small cobbles. We lunched TexMex at La Frontera. The food was ok, but not a patch on the decor which was great fun. I especially liked a door curtain made of upcycled beer bottle caps.

Virgin de Ermitana church 

The baroque Valencian style church high up in the town is named for the Virgin of Ermitana. Tradition has it that a small hermitage stood on this spot in the first years of Christianity and over the centuries that dwelling was rebuilt and rebuilt until it grew into the 18th century edifice we see today.

Peniscola is proud of its cinematic heritage and has signboards dotted throughout the streets showing where scenes from films such as El CID were located. A dedicated map for cinema fans is available at the Tourist Office. We unexpectedly strolled through a Juego de Tronos (Game of Thrones) courtyard location too, albeit for a season we haven't seen yet so I will have to remember to watch out for Varys and Tyrion in Meereen! They would have had this amazing view across the bay from the walls above their heads.

A very French campsite in Spain at Calig

Our pitch at Camping l'Orangeraie 

We have enjoyed sitting out in glorious sunshine this week at the beautiful Camping l'Orangeraie which is situated just outside a small historical town called Calig. The French-owned campsite is surprisingly green for Spain and pitch boundaries are made up of various trees and shrubs. There are some fabulous old olive trees dotted about which we think we read are a thousand years old - they certainly look as though they could be! Staying here is a little more expensive than at Didota or Ametlla. With our ACSI card the price is €17 per night to include electricity and wifi, and with water right by our pitch. A 10% discount is offered for stays of ten nights or more and we don't think we will have any problem with staying at least that long. It's wonderfully peaceful here. The sanitary block seems new and is very good. There's lots of scalding hot water and plenty of room in the shower cubicles.

Calig 

We took a walk into Calig on Tuesday for Market Day. It's about a ten minute walk along a pretty quiet road to get to the town. The market itself was very small and a bit of a disappointment, but we enjoyed walking around sightseeing. For shopping there is a good bakery and two small supermarkets, plus we saw a couple of greengrocers and a butcher.

Calig is proud of its 13th century fortified tower which looms up from narrow streets in the town centre. There is also an obligatorily oversized church, Sant Llorenc, and we spotted numerous historical details such as large medieval doors and interestingly tiled facades.

The local area is primarily agricultural with mostly almond and mandarin orchards. We have already spent an afternoon walking along camis exploring (actually Dave has been out twice) and hope to go further afield by bicycle one day too because it is reasonably flat here. In the meantime we will just keep soaking up the sun, sat on our loungers with a good book each, awaiting the daily stroll past of the shepherd with his flock of sheep to set the campsite dogs barking!

Sant Llorenc 

 

Tiled facade in Calig 

Oropesa to Benicassim - cycling the Via Verde

Me in front of the Mount Bovalar tunnel 

One of my favourite excursions during our stay in Oropesa was the day we decided to cycle from our Marina d'Or campsite to go and see the beautiful Victorian villas on Benicassim seafront. The two towns are separated by smallish mountains, but fortunately for us, a disused railway line that linked them has now been given a second lease of life as a Via Verde. The same idea as the Voies Vertes network in France, these green routes are only for pedestrians and cyclists and this one was perfect for our journey. It is only about five and a half kilometres long but the distance from the campsite easily doubled that so we ended up with over twenty kilometres cycled altogether.

La Corda or La Colomera 

The Via Verde passes the sixteenth century watchtowers of La Corda and La Colomera as well as going through pretty impressive deep cuttings and through the 570m Mount Bovalar tunnel. We had prepared for the tunnel by making sure our lights worked and carrying an extra head torch but this turned out to be overkill. It was helpful to be able to see other bike lights (and know that we too could be seen) as several groups were whizzing past, but the tunnel's own lighting was perfectly adequate to cycle by and the road surface was surprisingly smooth.

Villa Victoria 

Once in Benicassim, we slowly cycled along the seafront promenade, stopping frequently to read a number of information signs about the villas en route. Mostly built in the late 1800s and early 1900s and in an array of architectural styles, these villas were grouped into districts known as either Heaven or Hell depending on the type of parties that were held there! Several are now owned by Benicassim Town Hall and can be rented out for social functions. Other are still in private hands and it was good to see that only a couple looked in need of serious renovations. Tower blocks do stand between groups of villas which does somewhat ruin the overall effect, but it was still fun to imagine bright young things flocking to the town in its heyday. Our favourites were Villa Victoria which was built in 1911 and Villa Amparo where apparently Ernest Hemingway stayed for a while during the Civil War.

Villa Amparo 

Having seen a whole promenade's worth of gorgeous architecture, our thoughts turned to lunch! We chose to visit Torreon, a seafront restaurant with lots of outdoor tables in the sunshine. They do offer a menu del dia, but we just had burgers - the Chicago Burguer for Dave and a Veggie Burguer for me. Dave wasn't completely overwhelmed(!), but I enjoyed my tasty bean burger which had a slice of tofu in lieu of cheese and was served, saladed up, in a wholemeal bap and with nachos and guacamole.

I'm zooming ahead now! 

On the return cycle we paused to get a closer a look at one of the watchtowers. I can't remember now which one it was and there wasn't much to see close up because the lowest windows and doorway were a good ten feet above ground level. Good defensive strategy, but irritating to tourists!

I liked how busy the Via Verde was even on a weekday afternoon. I know it looks like we had it to ourselves in these photos, but in reality there were plenty of other cyclists, walkers and joggers making use of the car-free space. And a big thanks to Dave for being our official photographer! I had failed to charge my phone so couldn't use its camera. D'oh!

And now I'm so far ahead you can hardly see me! 

Onda's must see attraction: The Tile Museum

Tiles by Francisco Dasi 

I would highly recommend a visit to the Tile Museum (Museo del Azulejo / Museu del Taulell) in Onda for anyone who has a passing interest or more in history, art or local culture. There are over 20,000 tiles in the collection - although not all are on show at once! - which gives a fascinating illustration of technological advances and changes fashions in this region since Roman times. We learned that the combination of the right type of earth for firing, dense forests to provide firewood and the proximity of the ocean trade routes meant that this area, and Onda in particular, was perfectly suited for tile manufacture. Therefore this has been one of the main industries here for over two millennia. The Tile Museum does have examples of very early Roman and Visigoth tiles on display.

The Ayuntamiento (Town Hall) of Onda has recognised this history and its importance to tourism by building a fantastic new museum-conservation facility not far from the centre of Onda. Amazingly it is absolutely free to enter and we also received a nicely printed guide. Items in the gift shop are very reasonably priced too! Opened in 2004 I think, the museum not only displays important historic tiles and works by significant local and national artists, but also engages in conservation and restoration work, as well as holding workshops and events.

I loved walking through the aisles of tiles in the large permanent exhibition space. They are all arranged by age so we could easily see the evolution from pink sandstone coloured Roman tiles to brightly decorated 1970s to present day examples. We both loved the musicians tile mural pictured above, but I completely forgot to take a note of the artist's name. Please comment if you know!

Modernist tiles from the early 20th century 

A second permanent exhibition area is dedicated to tile manufacture. It includes various vintage machines and tools as well as a wonderful collection of black and white photographs of former tile factory workers. A nice touch is that as many as possible of these workers have actually been identified and their names are shown alongside each picture. I was fascinated to learn how tiles are both made and decorated. I was already aware that unique tile pictures would be artist-painted by hand, but had never given much thought to early methods of mass production. It turned out that the firing of blank tiles was a man's job, whereas women were employed as stencil painters. Several of the old photos shows rooms seating a couple of dozen women, each with a high stack of tiles, a paper stencil and a wide brush to paint a single colour. The photo below hows a series of tiles illustrating how these stencilled shapes build up to the finished design.

Finally we took a short walk outside, down the side of the museum building, to where a number of antique tiled public benches are on display. Designs ranged from a simple maroon and white check pattern to ornate pictures and I especially liked this yellow and green example with its repeating owl motif.

Our Valentine's Day in historic Onda

Almudin's Square 

Did we do something stupendously romantic for Valentine's Day this year? Well, er, no actually. For the first time we didn't even get each other a card although, to be fair, the Spanish don't go in for greetings cards in the same way Brits do so finding decent designs is a nightmare over here. We decided to put that cash towards a nice lunch out instead to celebrate our fourteenth Valentine's Day together (and Dave's eleventh anniversary of quitting smoking!)

A very nice lady at Oropesa Tourist Office told us about Onda, whetting our appetite to visit. We began by struggling to find somewhere to park in its maze of a one-way system and, that finally achieved, walked steeply uphill through the narrow streets of the old town towards the Moorish castle on the hill.

View from Onda Castle 

Onda's Castle 

Onda's Castle was first built in the 10th century and covers a large site overlooking the town. It has three distinct areas, the central one of which was the Alcazaba fortress-palace from the 11th century. The castle was once said to have a tower for each day of the year and although that wasn't quite true, its towers did number over three hundred in the castle's heyday. Now it is mostly ruins and an archaeological site with a few towers and walls renovated to give an idea of its former glory. Onda's castle is free to enter and there is also a small artefacts museum onsite although this wasn't open on the day we visited. It was still an interesting place to wander around. Informative placards explained the significance of much of what we saw and the views out over the surrounding town and countryside are breathtaking.

St Vincent Ferrer's Chapel 

We were given a small Onda map at the castle which included a suggested route through the oldest part of the medieval town taking in the old Muslim and Jewish quarters. Onda still retains a picturesque sense of its history in this area and we enjoyed a coffee in the arcaded Almudin Square (pictured above). Nearby streets retain a few heavy medieval wood doorways. The Muslim community lived in some 50 houses, an area known as the Moreria, until their expulsion in 1609. The pictured St Vincent Ferrer's Chapel was built on the site of the former mosque. The Moreria neighboured the Aljama, the Jewish community, until Jews were expelled in 1492. Nowadays only the remnants of a gate jamb remain to mark the old Synagogue Gate in the town walls. No one is exactly sure where the synagogue stood.

We got lucky with our lunch spot after a good walk around. I loved the decoration of buildings which includes painting and tiled frescos. Several of the restaurants were closed for the season and we didn't fancy resorting to pizza, but eventually stumbled upon La Taperia de Nati. This functional bar-restaurant was advertising a three course Menu Del Dia, but we had no idea what we would get! Unexpected lunch is what passes for excitement in my world! After some understanding of what we were being offered and some complete lack of comprehension, we ended up with two shared starters - Potatoes And Beans and Broad Beans With Bacon - two main courses - Bacalao for me and Pork for Dave - two desserts - coffee flan for me and chocolate cake for Dave - plus salad and bread, beer and wine, and coffees, for the grand total of €8.50 each. Incredibly good value and very good food!

Then after lunch we retrieved our car which, by accident rather than design, was just around the corner, and drove a little way out of town to the Tile Museum. Like the views from castle, I think this Museum should be an essential part of any visit to Onda - and I will blog about it tomorrow!

The Roman Arch at Cabanes

The Roman Arch at Cabanes 

We spent our fourteenth Valentine's Day together visiting the historic town of Onda. I will blog about that tomorrow, but for today I want to talk about the diversion we took on our way home to see the Roman Arch at Cabanes. The Arch was built in the 2nd century AD and was probably originally a funerary monument connected to a (then) nearby villa. It stood on the Via Augusta, a famous Roman highway, and today is still positioned at the end of a long straight road from Cabanes so, driving towards it, we got a sense of how it would have appeared 1800 years ago. The road is now routed on a roundabout around the monument though. No one has driven under it since the 1800s.

How the arch originally looked 

The Arch is no longer complete however. This reproduction of a medieval engraving shows further blocks rising to a height of nearly six metres. These blocks had vanished by the 1600s when contemporary artworks show the Arch as it currently stands. The information placard on site claims that some of the missing blocks can be spotted forming part of buildings in Cabanes - if you know where to look! Interesting architectural notes are that the Arch is made from limestone on a base of granite blocks and that it retains its curve without the use of a keystone.

We drove about 2km outside of Cabanes village to get here. There is a good cycle path from the village too, but as we drove back over the hills to get to our campsite we were glad we had not attempted to cycle there. The CV146 is too steep and narrow for our abilities!

Looking back along the Via Augusta 

Happy Valentine's Day from Oropesa!

The Les Santes walk through the Desert de les Palmes

Almond blossom 

The Ermita de les Santes is over the other side of the Desert de les Palmes from our Pico del Bartolo walk so we got to see completely different aspects to the natural park. The circular walk starts and finishes at the Ermita and is pretty easy going most of the way with just a short downhill section on the return stretch which was steeper and a little tricky. Our guide book indicated that the walk would take around two hours, but for once we finished well ahead of time in just one and a half hours! I think the route might take longer in Spring or Summer when more of the varied plant life hereabouts is in flower. We saw several orchard fields of blossoming almond trees, but otherwise most of the vegetation was evergreens or dormant. I did see my palms this time though! There are lots of fan palms along the Les Santes footpaths.

The route begins on a track right at the edge of the protected natural park so it was interesting to see almost impenetrable forest on one side of the track and open farmland leading to towering limestone cliffs, possibly the Marmudella, on the other. We also discovered that this side of the park is considerably cooler in temperature, perhaps due to the woodland although we were out in the open early on. Maybe the sun just doesn't get high enough over the mountains at this time of year.

Having previously read about it, we were keen to see one of the most geologically interesting zones in the park which is where the track leads over an outcrop of Palaeozoic slate. The slate apparently dates back some 230 million years! Unfortunately, while we are pretty sure we correctly identified this point as we walked over it, there wasn't really much to actually get excited about. Just a few metres of dark grey slate instead of the usual reddish sandstone.

So in lieu of a photo of ancient stone, here's one of our path spookily plunging into woodlands instead. I was a little perturbed that our guide book included a paragraph of instructions for what to do in case of a forest fire. We are used to being given blindingly obvious fire prevention advice such as not dropping matches or cigarettes, or discarding glass which can intensify sunlight to cause flame. I don't think we've ever told how to escape before though. We saw extensive evidence of the frequency of fires here. Most of the oldest trees aren't particularly large and along one stretch plant stems were still scorched black from a recent incineration which was a sobering sight. (Oh, and I learned fire tends to go uphill and downwind so we should head downhill and upwind. And, like in this tenuously relevant James Keelaghan song, Cold Missouri Waters, if necessary stand in an already burnt patch.)

This time we continued safely back to the Ermita pausing only to get out of the way of a gaggle of mountain bike riders heading up a very steep part-concreted part-rough track section of the route, and one man heading down the same on a vintage Royal Enfield motorcycle.

Ermita Les Santes 

The Ermita is dedicated to the Saints Llucia and Agueda and we saw photographs of the simple altar inside. The doors were firmly locked so we couldn't go in, but one of the doors in particular was amazing. Made of metal, it had been stamped by hand with hundreds of tiny dots to create shapes of religious figures. I am not sure exactly how old the original building is - around the early 1600s I think. It was renovated about twenty years ago and the work included the spring which is now piped out of a tiled wall into a beautifully clear pool. There is also a significant recreation area on terraces at the front which includes brick built barbecues and wooden picnic tables. The small car park was private to us for our walk(!) but probably gets busy during summer months and there aren't any parking options along the narrow 2km cami to the Ermita so then I would recommend either starting out early or be prepared to add twice the length of the cami to your walk.

Ermita door 

Fan palms! 

Two amazing new music Kickstarter campaigns - Peter Mulvey & Carrie Elkin

Two of my favourite singer-songwriters, Peter Mulvey and Carrie Elkin, emailed a couple of days apart this week to let me know they have launched Kickstarter campaigns for their new albums. Their music is different, but I love them both! I have (hopefully) embedded their Kickstarter videos into this post although they might be a little slow to load. Click through to the campaign pages for more information and to pledge...

Peter Mulvey is raising $17,000 for Are You Listening which he recorded at Ani di Franco's studio in New Orleans. He says "2016 was tough, people. And 2017 is turning out to be tougher. I have been launching little paper boats of whatever art, wit, beauty and tenderness I can muster onto the waters of this life for a long time, and I work to keep the faith that they make a difference. I'm doing my best and I thank you deeply for supporting my efforts."

Are You Listening?

Carrie Elkin has a target of $30,000 for The Penny Collector. This album is named for her father's hobby and it promises to be an emotional work. Carrie says "This year has been a profound one. As some of you may know, I lost my sweet papa 18 months ago. And then I had a baby four months ago. So it’s been a year book-ended by the most intense of human experiences. I wrote most of the songs on this record soon after my dad died, and right when I found out I was pregnant. At this intersection of joy and grief, I locked myself in a cabin in the mountains of New Mexico and wrote these tunes. The coming together of these emotions brought about a visual landscape in the songs that I would not have otherwise been able to write about. It was one of the most beautiful and telling times of my life."

Carrie Elkin | New Solo Record


If you haven't heard Peter's or Carrie's music before I hope these little Kickstarter videos tempt you to listen further. If you're already a fan, please get pledging!

The Pico del Bartolo walk at the Desert de les Palmes

The first thing you should know about the Desert de les Palmes is that it is not a desert. The second thing you should know is that there aren't any palm trees. Shoddy pre-visit research can often lead to disappointment! But at least we enjoyed a good walk out in (finally!) hot sunshine.

Desert de les Palmes is actually a 3200 hectare nature reserve covering a fairly narrow mountainous strip just in from the coast. The area got its name from a Carmelite religious order's use of the term desert to describe places dedicated to spiritual retreat. There are also apparently plenty of fan palms hereabouts, just not along the route of the Bartolo walk. The Carmelite monks arrived in 1697 and their two monasteries - one in ruins and one modern - are some of the most interesting buildings to be seen in the natural park.

Our walk began at the Information Centre which is set back from and above the single winding road and pretty easy to miss. We had to turn around a few hundred yards further on and return. There is a car park up the paved drive, but it closes at the same as the Centre itself (2pm in winter) so we were lucky to get parked just outside.

Looking down to the ruined monastery 

The Pico del Bartolo walk begins on rough footpaths of dark red sandstone, one of three walks leading away from the back of the Centre. It is well signposted all the way, but was worth picking up the yellow guide booklet from the Information Centre because this also contains interesting details of local flora and fauna, history and geology. We were mostly surrounded by rosemary bushes and smaller pine trees.

Looking up to the new monastery 

Footpaths soon become wider tracks and the road up to the 729m high peak is actually tarmaced. As well as the huge concrete cross pictured above there are are numerous television and communication masts up there which need maintenance. We stopped for lunch and magnificent views up at the top (our new highest lunch!) before returning back to our starting point. The whole walk only took about two and a half hours, an almost relentless uphill for the first half and an equally relentless downhill for the second. It is worth it for the views though and they are the reason this walk should be done on a clear day. We could see for miles!

Our new campsite at Oropesa, Camping Didota

I will admit that we almost turned around and drove away from Camping Didota on arrival. It is so different to Camping Ametlla that we weren't convinced we would like being here. However a combination of not having enough details of a nearby alternative and the fact that I would have struggled to manage a three point turn in the street outside meant we decided to give it a week and actually, now we are settled in, I think we may well be here even longer than that. Our minds were changed, of course, by the fantastic park I blogged about yesterday.

Arriving at Camping Didota from Camping Ametlla on Friday afternoon reminded me almost exactly how I felt around this time last year when we drove into Cambrils' Camping La Llosa from Camping Casteillets. From a pretty and almost deserted place with large, hedged pitches, we are now effectively in a busy gravelled car park. There are pine trees here, but their greenery is high above us. It's by no means a bad site though - just a bit of a culture shock! Our €15 per night ACSI price gets us a pitch with 4kW of 10A electricity per day, good quality wifi and access to the usual water, waste and sanitation facilities. We are within a minute's walk of the beach and can easily walk or cycle to shops. We were surprised by just how busy this campsite is. It's open all year and seems to specifically cater to northern Europeans so all signage is in four languages - Spanish, German, English and French - which is a great way to learn common phrases multilingually. I don't think there are actually any Spanish pitched up here. We seem to be mostly German, Dutch, French and Brits.

Where Camping Didota is unusual is the range of extra facilities and activities on offer. The restaurant is open and has special menus on certain days, music evenings and a tiny onsite shop. We saw on Didota's Facebook page that the Flamenco singers packed the place out on Friday! We could also sign up for yoga or aquafitness classes. The swimming pool is open every day, as is the jacuzzi, the gym and the television room. Six nations rugby anyone? There's even a whole room set aside as a library! Yet the campsite is relatively peaceful most of the time and practically silent after about 8pm. Whether we will get involved in any of the activities remains to be seen, but we might well allow ourselves to be tempted by the €10 menu del dia!

The fantastic gardens at Marina d'Or, Oropesa

Ripolles? sculpture at Marina d'Or 

I'm going to blog about our new campsite tomorrow, but first I wanted to show you photographs I took at a fantastic nearby park we discovered on our first afternoon here. There is a large holiday urbanization between Camping Didota and the town of Oropesa. It is called Marina d'Or, Ciudad de Vacaciones (Vacation City) and was built in the mid 2000s at the whim of property developer Jesus Ger Garcia. There are multiple campsites as well as dozens of holiday homes and apartment blocks, but in true Spanish style the city isn't finished. Around the resort are plots of waste ground where the infrastructure is all ready - streets, lighting, cycle paths and pedestrian crossings - but additional planned hotels and apartments have never been built. I learned that Marina d'Or was primarily intended for Spanish holidaymakers because this part of the coast isn't especially popular with foreign visitors. However the crash of 2008 caused dire problems with finances and apparently as recently as 2014 many of the apartments were still deserted for much of the year (according to this Daily Mail article anyway!).

Elephant shower 

We strolled into and around some of the resort on Friday afternoon. There were few businesses open, but that is not unusual for coastal Spain on February afternoons. Those that were closed looked just to be shut for the winter rather abandoned permanently. I think Marina d'Or has weathered the worst of its financial crisis and is on the up again. The central street is heavily adorned with Moorish style lighting frames and should look beautiful after dark so we must go back of an evening to see the lights. Along the beach giant fibreglass elephants commemorate Hannibal coming ashore around here with his famous war elephants in 220BC. The modern day ones also provide a practical purpose in that shower heads are plumbed into the ends of their trunks so swimmers can rinse off seawater!

Ripolles? sculpture at Marina d'Or 

The Jardines Marina d'Or park covers a large area and contains differently themed gardens including Koi carp ponds, bird aviaries, a children's playground, a cacti garden and a paved area with a 1950s American Cadillac car. Dotted around are numerous bizarre sculptures such as the ones pictured here and at the top of this post. To our eyes at least they look like the work of Ripolles, a fairly local artist we first saw nearby at Vilafames last year. I couldn't see any name on these works although we didn't get very close. This multicoloured man is reaching out to take oranges from a tree!

Orca mosaic benches at Marina d'Or 

The gardens are liberally provided with beautiful Gaudi-esque benches, mosaiced like those at Park Guell in Barcelona. Some are abstractly shaped and decorated. Others resemble animals and birds. There are also formal gardens, trees and shrubs from five continents, all labelled so we knew what they were, and many birds including swans, peacocks, and ducks. The Mandarin ducks looked particularly elegant and I photographed a Koi carp next to a swan so you can see just how big these fish have grown!

The park is surrounded by brick arched fences and is right on the seafront so we could explore its fantastic sights while hearing the ocean nearby. It is obviously a popular recreation spot for families from Oropesa and I am glad we got to see it at this time of year because I imagine it gets ridiculously busy during the summer months.