Wednesday 25 February - Alcalà de Xivert & Les Coves de Vinromà

Where’s Bertie? To his surprise, he’s back at the Aire at Les Coves de Vinromà, where he spent the last couple of nights

Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and warm in Les Coves, misty and cold in Alcalà de Xivert

A brief summary of our day is that we drove 21km on a very windy road over two passes to have a cup of coffee and then drove back again, but there’s a little more to the story than that.

After a 5km run this morning that saw me gain 130m of altitude in the first half, then lose it again in the second, we headed off over the hills to the town of Alcalà de Xivert. On the map the road that joins the two places is a tiny one, and in the UK it would have been a single lane with hedges brushing both sides of passing vehicles. Here it was a 2-lane road of perfectly smooth tarmac, that wiggled its way up and over the hills. We passed four other vehicles the whole way and contemplated that one of the reasons that roads tend to be in such good condition over here is because they see so little traffic.

Having decided against going higher into the hills on the basis of wanting to be warm, we’d opted to spend a couple of nights on a campsite in Alcalà. We knew from other reviews that they only accept ACSI cards (a scheme that gives members access to cheap off-peak rates at listed campsites, ranging from €13 to €27; this campsite was at the €17 level) on their smallest pitches, and there was a risk that there wouldn’t be one available, but I’d checked their online booking system and it was (I thought!) showing availability.

We  arrived to be told that they didn’t have a cheap pitch available, but we could have a superior one for €24. I retreated to Bertie to consult Mick, and whilst there I looked again at their online booking system, which was still offering me a pitch with electric for €18. So, I filled in the details and clicked ‘Book now’. It turns out that when they show availability they mean ‘it’s possible we may have availability’ and when they say ‘Book now’ they mean ‘make and enquiry and we’ll get back to you’ (and clearly, given the conversation I’d just had, the answer was going to be ‘no’). The compromise was that we would stay for one night, so I went back into the office to be told that the price had gone up to €26. We left, drove around the corner and parked in the free car park, where we could have spent the night, had we so chosen (but bear in mind that it was only just after 10.30am at this point).

The next issue was that we’d seen on our way down the hill towards the town that there was a sea fog cloaking the coast (which explains why for the last few days the temperatures where we have been, at some altitude, have been higher than those on the coast), and extending inland as far as Alcalà, and as we walked across town to find somewhere for coffee we came to realise quite how cold it was. 12 degrees said the display outside of the chemist, but with the breeze blowing it felt much cooler.

With coffee and croissant despatched, we braved the cold again to take a walk around the town. I’d seen mixed reviews of the place but we came down on the side of ‘not much to recommend it’. Perhaps it would have felt different on a warm and sunny day, but although the exterior of the church was impressive, we didn’t see anything else in the town that grabbed our attention. It was all a bit shabby and below average.

We repaired to Bertie to formulate a new plan, and finally settled on retreating whence we had come, making a lunch out the focus of the day.

Our pitch within the designated spots in the Aire had been taken in our absence, but that pitch hadn’t been ideal anyway, with overhanging trees obscuring the solar panel from the later afternoon sun. The two empty pitches were also of no use, as they sit under a sun canopy (undoubtedly most welcome in summer). However, all of the vans on the adjacent rough ground had now gone, so we took a spot there instead.

At 1pm we wandered up to the eatery next to the petrol station on the edge of town, just at the end of the road we’re parked in, and as we approached we agreed that we were likely to be the only people in there. We were wrong! There were already three tables of workmen, most in high-viz clothing, when we arrived, and as we sat there the place filled up with a pleasing mix of workmen, ladies-wot-lunch and couples. It’s obviously the place to go.

At €18 the menu del día may be the most expensive we’ve ever had, but we also have to acknowledge that costs and thus prices have increased and €18 is now a reasonable price. Very reasonable on this occasion; an excellent meal was had.

At the end of the day, we aren’t sorry that our visit to Alcalà didn’t work out. I’m sure we would have found some positives in the town, and some way to entertain ourselves there for a couple of days, but we’re happy to be back in the sunshine in a place we like, and we are only slightly kicking ourselves that we didn’t try the local eatery on Monday, so we could have had a return visit today (as I typed that I thought ‘Were they even open on Monday?’, and Google confirms that, in common with most of the eateries in this place, they were closed on Monday). Tomorrow, we will make another attempt to move on. 

Views from my run

The only impressive thing we found in Alcalà de Xivert

This only shows about a third of the tables

Ate pudding before I took the snap. Everything in these photos was included in the €18 each (and I've just noticed that the collage has trimmed off the bottle of wine and big bottle of water). It's been a long time since Mick was given a whole bottle of wine with lunch! 

 

Tuesday 24 February - Les Coves de Vinromà

Where’s Bertie? He’s spending a second night at the Aire at Les Coves de Vinromà.

Weather: Another gloriously sunny and warm day. The display outside the pharmacy, in the shade, said 22 degrees at noon, but I think that was about 2 degrees too optimistic.

Another cool night caused a slow start this morning, with neither of us eager to step out into the chilly air. By the time we set out at 0930 the sun was doing its job, although it was still another while before I divested myself of fleece and gloves.

With the nearby fords being underwater, we started out through the town to reach a causeway, then picked our way slowly back along the rocky path on the other side of the river, then on past the caves and on a good track for a distance. More slow terrain followed, but we didn’t mind as the surroundings got more and more impressive.

When the path petered out, the map told me we needed to ford the river which didn’t prove to be too difficult. I got a slightly damp big toe; Mick got a wet foot. The path on the other side then took us to a picnic area at an old mill, where the information sign told us some of its history, all of which I have now forgotten bar the fact that it was in use until 1930.

Other than the building and the semi-dam (which probably has a more technical name), we didn’t notice any of the other infrastructure here, but having crossed the water again (me dry-shod, Mick with a wet foot), we noticed what I’m going to refer to as the ‘mill race’ at the next one before we spotted that we’d just walked straight past the building. We were probably distracted by either path finding, or by the river, which really was quite spectacular at this point.

We’d hoped to reach a cave a distance further along, but the path takes to the river bed by then, which wasn’t feasible today, and we saw no alternative trodden line. What we did see was a big swimming hole, and I couldn’t resist. I wasn’t in it for many seconds, but did enough strokes to say that I went for a swim. It was certainly bracing, but the air was now warm enough that there was no shivering as I got out.

Our return was a retracing of steps, except that I wasn’t feeling inclined to repeat the trickiest ground between the caves and the town causeway, so once again we forded (me dry-shod, Mick got a wet foot). Having done that, we came to realise that we couldn’t then get back downstream to the caves, which in turn caused us to make our way up to the same viewpoint as we had visited yesterday, thence into town. A bonus, I would say, as if we had found a crossing point nearer to the caves, we wouldn’t have found ourselves within a minute’s diversion to a café that we’d seen, but had been shut, yesterday.

When Mick asked “How’s your coffee” a while later, I realised that I’ve become so accustomed to excellent decaf coffee being served at every establishment in Spain, that I’ve now got to the point where I don’t necessarily notice how good it is. The croissant here was big and deliciously fresh too, and the price such that if I hadn’t seen her add up the three items separately, I would have questioned whether she’d forgotten to add something to the bill (€3.90).

It was now afternoon, but we jogged straight past Bertie and went to look at the caves for which the town is no doubt named. How underwhelming! Apparently in 1947 a 10-year-old girl claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary in one of the caves, and reported that she had promised to return on 1 December and, as a sign, would turn day into night at 3 in the afternoon. News spread and an estimated 300,000 came to witness the event – or non-event, as nothing happened.

Our visit was also a non-event, as we’ve seen far more interesting caves elsewhere, and we didn’t find any rock art. I continued further along the precipitous path than Mick did, but returned with nothing more interesting to report. At least the rest of our outing had been excellent – if we had come solely for the caves it would have been disappointing.

Returning again to Bertie, we found there were now 8 motorhomes here (3 in the  designated spaces, 5 outside; another has arrived since). Funny how there can be such peaks and troughs when there were only 4 last night.  

This afternoon we have put a bit of thought into where we’re heading tomorrow, and it’s possible that we may have reached a conclusion. There are a couple of towns NW of here that I’d like to visit, but they are  at 500+ metres, so they’ll no doubt be chillier than we want. We didn’t drive all this way for such a short period to be colder than in the UK!

Rocky path = difficult to follow and slow-going

The first mill and its partial dam. We didn't see the other infrastructure described by diagrams on the information sign.

Enticing pools below the dam

                                                  

 The infrastructure that alerted us that we'd just passed another mill. 

 

Our turn-around point, where the pool proved too enticing

  

Evidence

I bet those well-dressed women on the table behind us appreciated our aroma!

View from the end of the caves path

Mick, unimpressed with the caves and declining to proceed any further.
 

Monday 23 February - Les Coves de Vinroma

Where’s Bertie? He’s in a municipal Aire on the edge of the small town of Les Coves de Vinroma. Exact location: 40.30679, 0.11893

Weather: sunny and warm (20 degrees max)

Our first mission this morning was to spend a little more money in Vilanova before we left, so we took a walk to the bakery. Had it not been for Google Maps, there’s not a chance that we would have found it, as although central, it’s down a little side street and the only thing that distinguishes it as a business, rather than just one of many almost identical houses on the street, is a little sign by the door. Even so, as I pushed back the chains of the fly curtain and opened the front door, I felt that I may be about to step into someone’s front room.

Despite going to the bakers, we had no need of bread, so we hoped to find they had some other wares for sale – some palmeras, perhaps. It turned out that bread was all they sold, so we bought a stick and enjoyed the sight, through a doorway into the back room, of a huge bread oven and a stack of logs used to fuel it. As we walked away I hypothesized that the baker (a woman who I would guess to be in her 70s) had been taken on as an apprentice by her father when she was in her teens, and nothing has changed about the shop or the manner or baking since (and I should clarify, that this is in no way a criticism).

On the way back to Bertie we passed the Cooperativa, which advertises olive oil for sale, so we swung by there too, but found it to be closed.

We soon had Bertie unplugged and ready to roll, discovering in the process that our French neighbours were actually Brits in a French-registered van.

With the toilet emptying point at the Aire blocked, our first stop along the road was la Torre d’en Doménec. The Aire there had plenty of space, and I’d originally earmarked it for our next stop, however, having run a circuit through the place a couple of days ago, and having already visited the bar, it didn’t feel like there was enough to see to warrant us staying, so with toilet emptied (insuring against the service point at our next destination being blocked, which is a common problem), onward we came another few minutes to Les Coves. We’ve moved a total of 15 minutes from where we spent the last three nights.

The Aire here was almost empty when we arrived, and is still largely empty now, with just two vans amongst its five spaces. However, there are a couple more outside of the designated area, understandably as outside is definitely nicer than inside.

With the morning rapidly reaching its conclusion, we wasted no time in making our way to the nearest bar for coffee, after which it was a turn around the town. All very quiet, with few obvious businesses, but pretty well-kept, with mainly smart houses. We had to venture down side-streets to find the typical derelict buildings with optimistic ‘Se vende’ signs in varying states of fadedness.

The river, its adjacent caves and the water wheels are the main features around here, and the plan is to take a walk along the river tomorrow. The slight fly in the ointment, as we discovered on a short pre-dinner stroll this afternoon, is that we can’t do the route I’d originally downloaded, because it involves walking along the dry river bed, and the river is currently far from dry. Nor can we easily cross the river at the nearest two crossing points, as they’re currently underwater. So, I think our aspirations for the morrow will need to be moderated.

(Blogger has decided to go with photos in reverse order today) 

View of the town from a few paces down the road from the Aire

Mick found Mick-sized bike next to the adult-sized one ;-)

Looking upstream towards the caves

A pretty, but not overly user-friendly map of the town

Possibly the worst view of the church I could have managed

Another day, another excellent decaf coffee. Comparatively expensive today (€5.50) but no complaints as the town has given us free parking. 
 

Sunday 22 February - Vilanova d'Alcolea

Where's Bertie? His wheels remain stationary in the Aire at Vilanova.

Weather: more wall-to-wall sunshine and pleasantly warm.

I did a much better job of being efficient and organised this morning, managing to get myself out the door by just gone 0830. Given the slowness of the terrain in these parts, I've translated my training plan from distance to time, giving me 4 hours as my objective today. I'd come up with two routes, one of which was 28km, which I thought might be a bit far, the other 20km, but with scope to throw in an extension. 

Once again, it had been a cool night, and as I descended from the village there were hints of frost on the greenery in the dips along the track. I was on the wrong side of the hill to get much sun at first, but once it did reach me, it warmed up quickly. By the time I was on my way up the biggest climb of the route, with the sun unimpeded, I was roasting. The sections through woodland were particularly nice thereafter.

At some point whilst I was gallivanting through the hills, our neighbour left and freed up an electric hook-up point and Mick wasted no time in nabbing it. He had already got Bertie ready to travel, but at that point it was decided that we would stay another night. A sensible choice given that it would have been mid-afternoon by the time I was ready to move on anyway. 

Back at Bertie, lunch was prioritised, followed by a shower and a few chores (like feeding the cat...), after which I thought it would be appropriate to go and give a bit of custom to the only bar in the village. Google told me it was open all day, through to 10pm, which seemed likely to be true on a Sunday. I expected there would be quite a few people there at lunchtime. 

We arrived to find it deserted save for the owner. He served us our beers, then told us he was closing at 3pm. I looked at my watch to see that it was five to! No problem though; we didn't have to slam-dunk the drinks, but rather just sit outside and leave the empties when we were done. Not really a successful attempt at giving custom by payment for a free Aire, given that the two beers came to a whopping €3.40!

We will be moving on tomorrow, by which time we will have maxed out on the (unwritten) 72-hour max stay. 

Just after I set out, on a shaded track with the sun still being low in the sky

There were waymarkers on lots of the paths and tracks I used, telling me I was stitching together various routes.

A nice shady interlude as the day got hotter

I can see the sea - with the sun reflecting off it. 

Lots and lots of scrub bushes, but all of the paths and tracks were wide enough for me not to get scratched legs today.

The processionary caterpillars are emerging, but I am yet to see any on the ground. 

I'd already taken a brief detour to visit a summit at 400m. I then dropped down to climb back up to this plateau, which was also at 400m. Even though the high points were modest, and I'd started at 350m, I clocked up over 600m of ascent. (total distance, with a couple of extensions added to the planned route, came in at 23.25km)

My sister has a feral cat who looks just like this - small and black. This one popped its head in and made it vocally known that it would very much appreciate a can of tuna, and who were we to deny such a polite request? 

Billy-no-mates, sitting outside a closed bar. 
 

Saturday 21 February - Vilanova d'Alcolea

Where's Bertie? He's still in the Aire at Vilanova.

Weather: Not a hint of a cloud seen all day. Cool overnight, but reaching 18 degrees this afternoon, although with a cool breeze.

We aren't very far inland here, but we are at an altitude of 350m where the nights are cooler than down on the coast. We certainly would have wanted the heating on first thing, if I hadn't had a loaf ready to go in the oven. The oven duly heated Bertie, and the loaf turned out to be a good one too.

The cool start caused us to be slower getting out the door than may otherwise have been the case, so it was ten to ten by the time we finally made it out of the car park (we'd exited Bertie for the first time a few minutes earlier, but one of us was proving to be disorganised ... and it wasn't Mick).

The route I'd downloaded led us mainly off-road, via an excavated Roman site, to the next village along. There we took a detour to the bar for coffee, only to see on our approach that the outside seats were empty and the door shut. Mick was just complaining that I'd lured him out under false promises of refreshment, when I tried the door to find it open. The seats inside were set out in the manner of a school canteen, and were also all empty. "Are you sure you fancy this?" I asked, and with Mick's nod, in we went. It turned out there was one set of customers, sitting on a terrace on the other side of the building, but we must have just preceded rush-hour, as more came in whilst we sat there. 

The coffee was excellent, but it didn't take us long to polish off both that and our toast, before we headed back out to the next point of interest. We'd already passed a large bicycle, and now we were to do a loop that would take us past a chair. A very steep and heavily washed out incline was involved in getting there.

Our route then took us back to the village and straight past the bar, but I maintain that, due to the time of day, we were right to have made the detour on the first pass. We were then on the (slightly longer) return leg back to Vilanova, via quite a few points of interest with information signs, although most were only in Valencian Spanish. I'm slow enough reading Castilian, and even though many of the words in Valencian are similar, there are enough differences to make them largely incomprehensible to me. Still, we got the gist that they had water management systems to assist with agriculture, including water wheels and donkey-driven pumps. Talking of water, the streams were all running well today, giving us a few obstacles to tackle in the form of fords, all of which (with some faffing) we managed to cross dryshod. 

A large group of walkers were met just before we got back to Vilanova, with many a ¡hola! exchanged, then it was time for us to peel off for the climb back up the hill to the village. The church, which doesn't look that imposing when you see it from the front (in a residential street, in between houses), looks massive when seen from the NW. Reaching it was the sign that we were nearly back at Bertie.   

It wasn't the best route I've done in this region, but it was inoffensive, with some mildly interesting history dotted along it. It came in at just over 13km with 250m-ish of ascent. 

Roman site - we only took a cursory look around.

Big bike, little Mick

Cafe y tostada

Big Chair, Little Mick

One of the POIs

For a considerable distance (over a kilometre), a path had been constructed using membrane and gravel, however, for most of its distance, the gravel has been washed away, leaving great swathes of membrane, either lying flat or bunched up as a trip hazard. A lot of time, effort and funds, but I don't think they quite got the engineering right. 

 

Shortly after we saw this mural... 

...we reached the next POI, where the info sign showed the original photo that had been replicated on the mural.

A surprisingly large church when seen from this side.

 

View looking back to where we'd just passed the group of ramblers (some of whom are in shot) 

 
  

 

 

 

Friday 20 February - Vilanova d'Alcolea

Where’s Bertie? He’s in a municipal Aire on the edge of the village of Vilanova d’Alcolea. Exact location: 40.23196, 0.07808

Weather: Sunny and warm

Our final few days in Peñíscola involved the usual activities of us pottering about, walking through the hills, running along the seafront promenade, topped off with some local eating and drinking.

We’d finally tried out ‘Hogar de Jubilado’. That translates as ‘Retirement Home’, which doesn’t sound like the obvious place to go for coffee, but contrary to its name, it’s just a café. I’d noted it to be heaving when I’d run past last year, and it’s very much a locals’ haunt, so we thought we’d give it a go. Good call! Aside from the wares being good (the apple cake was so good I was a bit sad to only have tried it on our final visit), I managed every order without receiving a response in German or English. Indeed, the second time we visited, the server correctly told us what coffee we wanted.

We would have gone back there on Wednesday, except that turns out to be their closing day, and also the closing day of the other place we had earmarked to try (the one by the market, where we nearly went last year but it was market day and too busy). We ended up at a rather more upmarket seafront café followed immediately by a menu del dia at Miguels (where they remain convinced that we are German). Mick would tell you that I complained for most of that entire outing – justifiable in that it was jolly cool in the seafog that was cloaking the town, but unjustifiable in that it was entirely my own fault that I’d under-dressed for the weather.

Normal service had been resumed on the weather front by yesterday (sunny and warm), when we returned to the Retirement Home for a final coffee date. I ran there, the long way around, whilst Mick set out some time later and walked the short way. Ordinarily, I’m pretty good at judging how long it will take me to get somewhere, but on this occasion I hadn’t factored in an accidental race*. Arriving to find Mick not there, I wondered if I'd been stood up, but no, it was just that I'd arrived unfashionably early.

This morning, after 11 nights at Camping los Pinos, it was time to leave town. Our Chunnel back to the UK is two weeks on Sunday, so it felt like time to go and look at some other places nearby. There are a number of municipal Aires just inland in the Castellón region, with the downside that many of them offer free or very cheap electric hook up, but this one has far more spaces than hook-up points, so I was optimistic about finding a free spot. My optimism was not misplaced; after a 35 minute drive** we arrived at around noon to find only the electrified spaces were taken (it's significantly busier as I type this just as the sky is glowing orange with the last dregs of sunset).

A wander around the town this afternoon showed it to have few points of interest and ‘interest’ was a loose description of those places that featured on the Tourist Information map and the audio tour. The audio tour would have been better if: a) it had been possible to play it on double speed; and b) there had been a way to access the recordings other than via QR code, in that we only found two of the codes and thus couldn’t learn about the other two POIs we visited. Maybe the remaining short section of town wall would have been more interesting than just being a nondescript wall of unknown age, if we could have learnt something about its history … or maybe not!

Tomorrow we shall venture a little further afield, on foot, on the locally advertised Petite Randonnée route.

Excellent apple cake

A day of sea fog kept temperatures down and hid the castle

One of the colourful sunsets snapped on the way back from the campsite dishwash. 

(*The accidental race was really quite annoying, all related to a man who wouldn’t be overtaken. He’d been moving so slowly as he passed the campsite, that as I walked along the road by way of a warm up, he wasn’t opening the gap between us. When I burst into a jog, I soon caught him up, but as I came into his sight, now on the opposite side of the road, he sped up. The two of us running at the same pace, on opposite sides of a pavementless road, was a problem for traffic, so I thought, given how slowly he’d been going, that I’d just put a bit of a spurt on and get past. So he sped up again. And repeat. Everytime I upped the pace, he upped his too. I couldn’t be doing with such ridiculousness on what was supposed to be an easy outing, so once it became clear that he wasn’t going to let me pass, I stopped dead, resisted calling him any offensive names, and then resumed once he was a good way past. He duly slowed down again.)

Tuesday 10 to Saturday 14 February – Peñíscola

Where’s Bertie? He remains at Camping Los Pinos.

Weather: warm and dry Tuesday to Thursday (20+ degrees daytime highs). Overcast and some rain Friday morning. Extreme wind today, but gloriously sunny.

There’s nothing much to report. We’re just pootling about, enjoying ourselves doing not very much.

We both headed out into the hills on Tuesday, with Mick turning back (as planned) at the signed junction to Vistahermosa, whereas I carried on with the Castello Pulpi being my intended objective. It was only when I got to a closed path and checked to see if it was a turn I was supposed to be taking, that I discovered that I’d gone awry about a kilometre earlier and was merrily walking off down the wrong side of the hill. Ooops. No matter – as long as I was moving over rough terrain with plenty of ascent for 3 hours, it didn’t much matter where I went, so it turned into an out-and-back with a few branches attached to it (the other two branches were intentional!). 

 This was not where I intended to be!

Embarrassingly, this is the junction where I'd gone wrong. 
 

On Wednesday we discovered that our favourite cafe y tostada bar has permanently closed – a surprise as it was always so busy last year. We went to another place that had looked popular when I’d passed previously, but found that they didn’t offer tostada, only ham sandwiches (perhaps the clue was in the  name: El Nuevo Jamón). It was a very good ham sandwich, but also not the bargain of tostada in a local bar. 

Thursday was a three-course lunch at Can Miguel, which featured the comedy of me speaking Spanish to the waiter and him replying in German, persistently, the whole time we were there. Having failed to disabuse him of his notion as to our nationality, there’s the danger, like going past the point of telling someone that they’ve got your name wrong, that he may remember us and we will now forever be German to him. That creates the bigger danger that at some point he will say something in German that we don’t understand, forcing us to come clean.

I would usually make a collage of these photos, but technology is conspiring against me.

Alas, the meal likely contained something that my body has now randomly and erroneously decided is Very Bad, and the ensuing migraine had me feeling sorry for myself overnight and into yesterday. That made most of yesterday a write-off, which was actually reasonably well-timed given the grey sky and showers. The furthest we went was to the supermarket (about a 3 minute walk away).

We were back in Bertie when suddenly sirens started sirening. We have four phones onboard, and three of them were connected to the network when the government issued an emergency alert for a red weather warning for hurricane-force winds in this area today. The other phone sirened when I turned it on at bedtime. This is interesting, as I didn’t receive the alerts sent out on either occasion when the UK system was tested.

Needless to say, it’s a bit blowy out today and as I type this it’s still 3 hours before the winds are due to peak, but it’s going to stay windy until the early hours of tomorrow.  

......

Later... just after I typed the above, another emergency alert came through, reminding everyone not to travel today. As it goes, we don't think the winds got anywhere near the forecast levels (140km/h), as there's no evident significant destruction from what we can see around us, although there were certainly some big gusts and staying indoors felt like the safest choice. By 6.30pm it was still remarkably blowy, but had settled down enough for us to think that venturing over to the dish washing area wasn't a foolhardy expedition. The way the roof was rattling over there was a bit alarming; a speed dish washing session was completed.  

Bonus snap #1. Forgot to mention that we also took a run down to, and along, the seafront on Thursday morning, except I had to walk most of it because my shins and ankles were protesting so much after Tuesday's outing.

Bonus snap #2: taken in the campsite toilets, mainly to marvel at the length of the single-word title.