Escaping the winter weather by holidaying in Guardamar del Segura, Costa Blanca again, the first time since the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020 when we stayed here during Spain's first lockdown. Great to be back and getting our cycles back into action and enjoying the sunshine and milder weather.
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| Sand sculptures on the local beach |
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| Cormorants drying off on the Segura river next to the cycle track to La Marina. Note some white Asphodels in the foreground. |
We have done several trips so far including Alicante by bus and cycling to some of the local villages such as Las Marina, La Marina, Rojales, Catral and La Mata.
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Alicante in the sunshine after walking through the old town and market area.
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Our trip to Spain also coincided with the start of the Ukraine-Russia war so we saw many signs condemning the war and anti Putin signs:
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| Town hall on international women's day (after the crowds had left). |
After seeing some of Altea, we went on to the Guadalest valley some 40 minutes drive away on a winding climb, some through some pretty urbanised areas. The village has a long history and some more recent aspects of rural life are collected in the "Ethnological" museum near the castle. This is said to typical house of the eighteenth century built into the rock of the village and showing aspects of hard daily domestic and agricultural life of the people. We also had great views of the valley and the "El Embalse de Guadalest" in the valley below the castle.
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| Guadalest looking up to the castle. Cooler up here in the mountains and nice to get inside for lunch. |
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| View of the Guadalest valley and embalse from near the castle. The lack of rain is clearly seen in the water levels. We were fortunate that the sky was clear and gave us great panoramic views of the surrounding sierras. Also views of the terraces below still used for horticulture. |
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| Nispero fruit on bushes near Guardamar. The region around Guardalest is known for this fruit and we saw the bushes covered with netting to protect them. We also bought some conserve in Guardalest made from the local trees. Pepi in our local bar told us he has them in his garden but the fruit easily fall with very cold weather. |
Following this we went by bus to Cartagena further to the south and spent a day doing touristy things. We had a forty minute cycle ride to get the bus at La Marina village through a sand storm with high winds but it didn't prove too bad and meant a rear wind home after the trip. We visited the ancient Roman theatre that had been excavated from the centre of the city after it was discovered underneath the residential area. It is amazing how they managed to preserve the remains of the original construction. We had the place to ourselves apart from a school tour.
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| The Roman theatre looking from the stage out to the audience. The old church is on the top right of the photo. Notice the orange glow to the sky caused by the sandstorm. |
We also visited the Naval Museum near the docks and were amazed at the ship models of all descriptions in the museum and also some of the wood working tools used by the early shipwrights including a frame saw and bow saw that are similar to the ones that I built (described in my other blog). We did run out of time as the museum closed at two and we still had to have lunch before departing at four.
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| One of the tools on display an old bow saw with hemp string to tighten. This one didn't have handles as such and also the blade curved towards each end making it unusual compared to modern designs. |
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| Rip frame saw presumable used to build the Spanish galleons. |
After these visits we had a few unsettled weeks with the highest rainfall that Spain has seen in March for 100 years (according to the headlines!). However, once we had escaped this and back to warmer and less windy weather we did some more cycling on routes I described in 2020 and before. A new one was around the La Mata Lagoon (Laguna Salade de la Mata) going along the CV -895 towards Quesada and following this south to join the CV-905. The latter part of this route was a good cycle way with marked crossings at roundabouts that the cars gave way to us. Once we were at the south-west corner of the lagoon, we crossed the dual carriageway to a watch tower and a wide track along the southern edge of the lagoon. Here we saw flamingos in the water near the edge as the rough track meandered near the lagoon. After the rains the dirt track was firm but a little water logged in places but was easily passable all the way to the village of La Mata for lunch. The return was on our usual cycle track alongside the N332 into and then through streets in Guardamar, about 30 km distance in total.
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| The lagoon taken from the watch tower at the south-west corner and looking across the water towards urbanisations. The track in the foreground follows the southern boundary of the lagoon to the village of La Mata. |
After this we had further storms, apparently the worst in Alacante area for 50 years. We have never experienced continual bad weather with wind and rain for more than a couple of days during other visits so this came as a surprise, especially after the good weather and sunshine earlier in February. However, things did improve during the last week of our stay and so we were able to do more cycling.
We had decided to travel home by train and ferry to reduce our carbon emissions. We had previously purchased our Dorado cards (senior citizen travel cards at 6 Euro each) from the station at Alicante and booked the train from Alicante to Santander (direct) on the RENFE web site. I found this easy and they sent the tickets to my mobile. The train left at 10.35 am on a Saturday so we got a taxi from Guardamar to the terminal station in Alicante. Face masks are still needed in indoor spaces in Spain (April 2022) including public transport and we had ffp2 masks for the trip. The train goes directly between Alicante and Santander going between the Madrid stations (Atocha and Chamartn) taking just over 6 hours. Infact we did change trains in Madrid at Atocha but this meant crossing a platform. This seemed to be unexpected by everyone so I suspect this was not normal as the train is a direct one. The train made nine stops: Villena, Albacete, Cuenca, Madrid Atocha, Madrid Charmartn, Segovia, Valladolid, Palencia, Torrejavega and arriving in Santander on time at 6.15 pm actually. The train was Alvia 04143 (maximum speed 250 km/h), not as fast as the AVE trains but able to change speed according to the track. We travelled by "Tourist Class" and this was comfortable with plenty of space and a bonus that the seats orientation could be changed so that you always travelled facing forward. They had a service carriage and also brought drinks and sandwiches around the train.
It was interesting to see the changes in scenery travelling across country with the arid highlands to start with and later the greener corn fields with lots of the Stone pines near Segovia and then crossing the Picos mountains reminding us of scenery at home and also the Pyrenees further north with fertile valleys and more mixed farming.
In Santander we stayed at a hotel near to the station and also the ferry (Abba Hotel) and had glorious weather not typical of Santander at this time of year (maximum 26 C). We visited the Bolin Art Centre and also the Maritime Museum as well as several parks and the shopping area. We left much to see for future visits and enjoyed eating out at different restaurants further back from the main promenade (which was very busy with Easter already started).
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| Sea front at Santander looking from the "Centro Botin" towards the Maritme Museum in the distance. |
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| In the Jardins de Pereda near the "Centro Botin" |
