I haven’t heard anyone speak English for three days, apart from my husband. I haven’t eaten a lot that hasn’t been freshly hauled from the sea. Nor have I been much more than stone-skimming distance from the beach.
I am spending a weekend on the Costa del Azahar, the coast that the Spanish happily keep to themselves. All along the 50 miles of sands, stretching from Castellon de la Plana to Vinaros, Spaniards have been building hotels and putting up beach umbrellas for holidays for decades, without so much as a sniff of those great British fry-ups you find elsewhere in Spain.
What I do sniff though, constantly, is azahar — orange blossom. And the British are coming: many of Azahar’s restaurants have translated their menus into (faltering) English, a nod to the flights that will land at the Castellon-Costa Azahar airport when Ryanair starts flying here from Stansted and Bristol next month.
We are staying at the Parador De Benicarlo, 50 minutes from the airport. It is not just that the paradors, with their tendency to occupy the grandest, most historic buildings, are a safe bet. It’s because we want to explore the port town of Vinaros and the medieval walled city of Peñiscola — and this hotel is nearly halfway between the two.
Benicarlo itself has a sandy beach and a pleasant old town dominated by the Church of Sant Bartomeu. As the day heats up, we step into a café in the shade of the church’s octagonal bell tower for coffee and to plot our first day’s excursion, to Vinaros.
Advertisement
I am keen to get there in time for lunch, and we do. Although Vinaros may not be familiar to most British people, to the Spanish it means one thing only: langoustines. And if there’s a gourmet treat I can’t resist, it’s these plump crustaceans. We take a table on the terrace at Restaurante Bergantin and order a plate of them, cooked a la plancha (grilled) and served with a squeeze of lemon. I’ve been told that these langoustines taste different — better, insist the locals — because they come from the low-salt, warm waters of the Ebro Delta just to the north. I can attest to their deliciousness, though they don’t last long enough for a detailed taste test. My verdict is a pair of juice-covered hands and an empty plate.
Lunch on the Costa Azahar takes at least two hours: they take food that seriously. It is also so hot in the early afternoon that all we are good for is another glass of verdejo and a slice of home-made cheesecake. We stay on the shaded terrace long after the obligatory chupita, a milky-white rice liqueur.
The heat having beaten us on day one, we set out early the next morning, taking the road south before most of the Parador’s other guests have thought about breakfast. We plan to hike up to the 16th-century Torre Ebri in the Sierra de Irta before the sun gets too fierce.
Finding it, though, is harder than I had imagined. This is an area few tourists visit and to access the high hills of the sierra we have to pinpoint the one road that my map suggests may run all the way up there. This begins in Alcossebre, a resort better known for its beach — where freshwater springs bubble through the sands — than the ridge behind it.
At first we are confident, following the brown signs that read Serra d’Irta (this protected area’s name in the Catalan dialect of Valenciano). Then, though, the signs let us down, standing back to back at a T-junction. One tells us to head towards the sea, the other away from it. Commonsense says to head inland, so we do, taking a road so breathtakingly steep that we seem to be looking straight up at the sky.
Advertisement
Eventually we reach the hamlet of El Pinar and a tiny wooden sign pointing wonkily to Ermita de Santa Lucia. This Valencian baroque church stands atop the mountain of Sant Benet and looks over the plains towards the coast, as well as in- land over the region of Spain generally considered to be its most fertile, with lines of olive trees leading to orange and lemon groves.
We don’t linger though; the day is hotting up, adding a few more drops of sweat to each of the 6km we plan to walk. Setting out from the church, the trail starts in the pine forest but we are soon out on the ridge, walking along a dusty track and draining our water supply at speed.
In the 17th century it was not just the sun that people here had to guard against. Berber pirates raided this coast, taking the locals and holding them to ransom or selling them as slavesin north Africa. The problem was so bad, with thousands of people being seized, that the authorities put up watchtowers like the one we are aiming for.
We reach Torre Ebri, relieved to find that we can hide from the sun inside its thick stone walls. My husband finds a series of metal hoops in the wall and clambers up to investigate the top of the tower. I stay seated, looking out across the scrubland and dwarf palm trees to the brilliant blue Med.
The sun is at our backs for the descent and we bound along, keen to get to the long lunch I feel we deserve.
Advertisement
We are booked in to Casa Jaime in Peñiscola and I expect more Vinaros langoustines. This restaurant, though, has a greater choice of seafood. Soon we are munching on aperitivos of galera (mantis shrimp) croquettes and tuna and tomato-topped bread. A carpaccio of red prawns with three types of olive oil follows and, finally, a vast pan of arroz calabuch, owner Jaime Sanz’s version of paella, the Valencians’ staple dish. We are told it is made with sea cucumber (espardenyes) and sea anemones (ortigas de mar), both of which we chase around the rice as they collapse into it.
After lunch we can only waddle and so we cross the road, kick off our shoes and plunge our toes into the sand of Peñiscola’s Playa Sur. The beach follows a wide arc towards the medieval old town, which is encircled by chunky stone walls and looks as though it is sitting in the sea attached to the mainland by only a narrow strip of land.
The water here is so shallow that even the shortest adult could wade out 65ft (20m) before the water reached their waist. And so we splash through the surf at the water’s edge, dodging games of bat and ball and weaving past children learning to swim. A better beach for families would be difficult to find.
From the beach we move on to cobbled streets, too narrow for one hand-holding couple to pass another. The reward for climbing up the steps to the town’s 13th-century castle is cool air, with the walls of the church and the palace — home to the 15th-century antipope Benedict XIII — blocking out the afternoon sun.
Few people have braved the heat today and so we have the polished marble of the roof terrace to ourselves. All around us is water, electric blue and so clear we can see its sandy bottom. All that interrupts the seascape is that isthmus, with two arcs of golden sands either side of the church belltower.
Advertisement
It is a view that picture postcards were made for. Wish you were here? As long as you’re not after that great British fry-up.
Need to know
Helen Ochyra travelled as a guest of the Paradores (parador.es/en). Double rooms at the Parador de Benicarlo start from £85. Ryanair (ryanair.com) will fly three times a week from London Stansted and twice weekly from Bristol to Castellon from September 15, from £19.99 one way. Carrentals.co.uk has car hire from Castellon de la Plana airport from £26 a day.