Spain Day 15 - Cirat to Valencia

 Time for a change. Writing this last night it became apparent that pretty towns and beautiful views are starting to blur a little. The only fixed point on our whole holiday is to head to Valencia today so perfect timing! 

That said the road leading from Cirat has a green line next to it on the map and it doesn’t take long to see why. Green is the colour … hills here lack the barren patches seen elsewhere and are covered in pines. Roads are a little busier now, far from busy but passing a car is no longer noteworthy. Possibly walkers heading out at the weekend? Certainly the groups of motorcyclists is a new thing and no doubt weekend related. You can see why they’d choose this road … great bends and smooth tarmac… Graham’s happy to be driving it even in a van!


As we approach the town of Onda the landscape starts to change and flatten out and there are increasing signs of industry, as well as the occasional orange grove. Onda had been the alternative stop for us last night, but looks like we did the right thing stopping early, as it is not what we imagined but its a large sprawling town with no obvious character. What it did have though was a range of supermarkets on the ring road so we plumped for Mercadona, a great choice, far more Spanish feeling than Lidl and lots of great fresh produce. Graham had noted that Onda was famous for ceramics and had suggested that as a lover of all things ‘pottery’ I might like to take a look. However, these were ceramics at a never before seen scale, in fact the ceramics in this case are tiles and there were literally miles of factories and shops of all sizes involved in making and selling tiles in numbers that were hard to believe. 

After Onda we joined the main road to Valencia, there were no other sensible alternatives and we had a fair distance to cover. Oranges are definitely the crop now. Row upon row in all directions. Temperature is creeping up too with the car reporting 26 degrees at one point.

We decide to take the southern bypass around Valencia, possibly a mistake as it skirts the town centre which is heaving with visitors. There are occasional ‘bangs’ from street fireworks and already we can sense it’s not a normal city day. However, the route did mean that we got an advance look at the arts and science park … or at least I did as driving was too stressful for sightseeing at the same time so G missed out.


20 mins south of the city we arrived at our campsite, Looks like a ‘resort’ on arrival much like the type we’d have gone to when the kids were younger, but the ‘pitches’ area is quite self-contained and has a calm feel separate from the ‘bungalows’ on the other side of the site. There are activities going on for children elsewhere, but the they are just a distant noise and not going to give us any trouble. We hear what sounds like distant thunder and realise that it’s 2pm and what we’ve just heard is the Mascleta in the city centre some 20 miles away…

For us the city is waiting until tomorrow, two weeks in and with a base for a few days it’s washing, cleaning, sorting, checking bus times and a getting ready for a few days in the city…

Occasional distant bangs continue all evening but they don’t stop our sleep! 

Miles so far: 882

Steps today : 4,265 (def. a driving day!)

Overnight: Devesa Gardens €147 for four nights

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