Valencia

 

We have already decided that we should come back to Valencia despite the celebratory fireworks in the square  outside of the  cathedral “La Seu” causing a momentary panic that there was an active shooter in our vicinity!  As we found in the small towns a string of firecrackers is a common feature punctuating the end of a wedding ceremony.

We caught the train to Valencia from our small village for a 4 day stay right on the beach on the eastern side of the city.  The Mediterranean Sea was warm enough for me to swim a couple of times and the wide, flat beach is a playground and exercise venue for multiple groups who come there every morning.

Daytime temperatures were around 26C (78F) with a cool breeze every evening.  We saw on the news that the October just ended was the warmest on record for Valencia.

Some small palm trees on the edge of the beach promenade made it clear that the wind along this beach is consistent and can be quite strong but the weather was really great for the 4 days we were there.

Our apartment had a little coffee machine but we found it hard to shake the habit of walking to a small breakfast place (we had many to choose from on the beach) for coffee and some toast and the incredible orange juice squeezed fresh from Valencian oranges.

We took advantage of the many bicycle rental places to rent bikes and ride along the old river Turia that was been converted into a green space after it flooded and destroyed a path through the city in 1957. 

The river was diverted to run west of the city and its former path restored.

The city is not massive - it appears to be close in size to what Boston is with 800 000 people in the city and 1.6million including the surrounding areas.  It was founded in 138BC (I know!) by the Romans and has endured tumultuous times through its existence. 

 

The city has an old inner section called the “Centro Historico”

and some really modern museums and artificial edifices in the reclaimed riverbed which were worth a visit.  

We stopped for tapas at a cafe in the Old Town.

 

 

We didn’t visit very many places but the small streets near the beach were as expected, with semi-detached homes crowded against each other in colorful blocks

Riding buses in Valencia is pretty easy if you know which ones to catch.  The paths of the buses are described in an oval on each bus-stop so if you know which bus-stop you need you can probably piece it together.  Our host at the AirBnB was very helpful for our bus-trip into the city on the Saturday which we benefited from because we’d been on a bicycle ride in the vicinity of the central city before we were due to go in for the day.  You can download an app or just hop on and pay one Euro and 50 cents - which you can use over and again for an hour if you need to change buses on your route. 

 

On our last night we were joined by Sharon a friend from Massachusetts who has been traveling since April and had lots to share.  I'd been wanting to eat Paella and we took a vegetarian order for the three of us.  I'll be honest it tasted a little burned but who knows, I'll have to try a few more for comparison when we go back there.

 

Our visit was a little too short but the next stop is West Molesey near London to visit our daughters and their growing children!

Fresh Air

 

Not long after we arrived in the little town of Potries in Valencia we noticed that there was a lot of smoke in the air.  It appears that the standard practice for clearing off-cuts from pruning the orange trees here is to burn them in a small cylindrical structure made out of concrete bricks.  

 

After several days of this with little wind, we could smell the smoke in the air in the town and it started to affect Anne’s breathing.

A structure for burning off-cuts in the lower left

Mental note to add to the checklist of what to do when traveling:  "Find out how to get to see a doctor when it is urgent"  

 

It all ended well because we managed to get to a private clinic where we were told that the next available appointment was a month away BUT we could either go to an emergency room or check in with a pharmacist.  Anne has had this happen to her a few times before (though admittedly not since the early 2000’s) and so she was able to tell a pharmacist what she needed and he was happy to oblige.  In Spain you don’t need a prescription for steroids and the pharmacist said he could give them to her but not tell her how to take it.

By the weekend, Anne was starting to feel a little better and she had found somewhere that looked like a pretty good place for hiking.  It is called “Via Verde de Serpis” (Via Verde just means “a green way” so many paths and hikes have names that start with this).

We found a guided tour but it turned out that they needed us to check in by 9am and we have duties to perform (walking dogs etc.) in the morning so that was impossible.  So we made our best guess for where to go for the start of the hike but it was confusing!  All the maps showed the destination 6.5km away but when we looked for the route it said the trip would be 1hr13min!

The hiking route is an old rail line that was converted into a walking/biking route and we realized that our directions were showing us a start on the other side of a steep mountain pass.  I thought I would look for a place on the route on this side of the mountain and we could hike in the opposite direction.  So after consulting the maps for a place to park on this side of the mountain we were off…

The town on this side of the mountain is called Vilallonga or Villalonga - which has two versions of the name, one in Spanish and one in Valencian.  We had seen tourist signboards both in Valencia and Spanish at various points in the towns we’d visited and the two languages appear to overlap by about 60-80% with a lot of French-similar words in Valencian.  

We stopped near a Bar on the road that was supposed to be this side of the mountain (and supposedly near the trail) and I confidently asked a man in the parking lot if we were near Via Verde del Serpis.  He said emphatically not!  He then went on to explain to me (I think in Valencian because I understood 20% of it) how I should go to get to the trail.  He warned that it was late in the day and we’d never make it but if we wanted to we should go straight down the road, look for the tobacconist, and then the “????” (I think he said station, but is "estanque" a station?) and then turn left (or was it right?) and and keep going for a long way!

He then said something along the lines of “did you get that?” and I foolishly admitted that I got maybe 30-40% and so he tried again (3 times!) until Anne returned (she had been walking along the road a bit) and told me that “estanque” is a pond, not a station.

So we got into the car and followed the directions on the phone over this incredibly winding and narrow pass - with places where two cars could not pass on tight corners and sheer drops off to the right that left Anne gasping in fright until we came to the other side where the hike began.

The town on this side of the mountain is called L'Orxa (pronounced Lorsha). We parked and hiked for about 60min until we reached the first of the rail tunnels under the mountain

and then turned back -

 the excursion had taken us long enough that we were in danger of getting back late for the dogs’ evening walk.

The fresh air in the mountain and beautiful views had re-energized Anne and she was breathing easily when we got back that evening.

The next day we set off again - this time armed with somewhat of a map of where we needed to go.  I had worked out that the end of the trail on our side of the mountain was a distance down a road that our phones didn’t know too much about so I marked as far along it as I could and we just kept driving when the phone showed us off map.

We found a parking lot with a number of cars and crying children who didn’t want to walk any further and we saw a big sign that seemed to show that we were perfectly on track.  

I confidently led Anne up the road but after a while of walking she said: “Aren’t we just walking up one of the mountain passes that takes us over the mountain?”

I wasn’t about to admit that it was likely so we kept going for a while until Anne said that we should turn around and try the path across the road and down off to the right from where the big sign had been.

Sure enough - after losing an hour to the mountain pass again - we found ourselves on the real Via Verde del Serpis path on the Villalonga side of the mountain.

We walked for another hour, seeing some beautiful views and coming across the ruins of what must have been a monastery right on the river.  

On the way back we found the remnants of large water pipes and sluices along the side of the mountain - what amazing feats of engineering to transport water way above the riverbed!

We drove back with lots for fresh air and beautiful views to fill our souls and went to our favorite bar to have our first dinner out (the menu was brought to our table at 9pm which was the earliest they’d serve dinner).