4. Exploring regional Valencia ☀️⛰️🥾🍷🚲

Our next adventure was to explore the Valencia region. We’d always read about the hills above Valencia city, and we were keen to explore. It was helpful having a campsite identified at Navajas as this then gave us an address to which the contact lenses from home could be delivered 🤣 So well in advance of our arrival, Claire very kindly sent them off via registered Royal Mail. More on this story to come 😃

Probably fair to say that the campsite we’d chosen wasn’t really our cup of tea. Although not horrendously busy it was full of UK vans, and felt quite congested - particularly after the tranquility we’d experienced at Els Ports. Anyway, embracing the experience, we made friends with our neighbours Jill and Malcolm from Cornwall, and a really interesting NZ couple, now living in the UK, and pottering around Spain on their electric tandem 🤣

Ideal for me, the Ojos Negros Via Verde ran alongside the campsite, so we set out on our bikes to explore. Headed north and arrived at Jerica, a town of Arab origins, with the old Torre Mudejar de la Alcudia standing prominent. The weather was quite dull these couple of days, but there were definitely signs of spring 😃

Jerica and the Mudejar Tower

The Ojos Negros Via Verde 

Felt like spring had arrived 

Did some walking also in the area, and managed to find some water for Rubes to cool off in. Dave also collecting seed pods to bring home and experiment with in our garden 🤣

A cooling dip

Seed pods to take home

Venturing a little further afield we headed into the Sierra Calderone Natural Park, which lies just to the west of Navajas - another hair raising drive over steep, twisty mountain passes - well done Dave, again! Starting from Olocau the walk we did was fabulous, and by this time the blue skies were back and the temperature rising. We walked through beautiful limestone woodland, with both almond and cherry blossoms starting to emerge. Finished the walk with a late lunch at the one and only restaurant in Olocau -  basic Spanish food, 3 courses plus a drink, all for €14 each 😃 

Walk from Olocau

Olocau 

Thank goodness for the irrigation system 🤣

Basic spanish lunch - and this was only the first course!

By this stage in our stay we had hoped that my contact lenses would have arrived - but sadly not 😥 Tracking their journey online suggested that they were still stuck in import customs in Madrid, so we decided to leave the campsite for a few days and explore further afield. We headed down to the Valencia coast. Just parking up at the beach when the phone went - the receptionist from the camping saying that the postman was with her and needed me to sign for a letter. Cutting a VERY long story short, it was agreed that we would need to visit the post office in Navajas on Monday to sign - it was currently Friday! Still no idea if postie actually has my contact lenses or whether this signing, and payment, is to release them from customs in Madrid 😥 To be continued…..

So now left with the weekend to explore. Decided against visiting Valencia city - a shame really, but felt too challenging finding somewhere to stay (no van overnight parking within the city), outer campsites not great, and having Ruby with us - who doesn’t like cities at the best of times, and it was getting hot!! By “mistake “ we had ended up driving right through the centre of the city, and saw the amazing buildings of the famous science and technology park - but a city experience to be pursued some other time in the future 😊

So sticking with what tends to work best, we had a lovely walk on the beach - rubes loved it! Then headed a little further inland to one of the main wine producing areas- around - Requena and Utiel. Stayed the night at a lovely old family owned Bodega, very warmly welcomed, and shown a fabulous place to park for the night overlooking the vines - free to stay. We were keen to taste some of their wines, and hopefully bring a few home, so at 6pm one of the family opened the bodega tasting room for us 😊 It was a lovely experience, trying a couple of wines, and chatting about the farm and their business- apparently it being one of only 24 wine producers in Spain where the whole process of growing the vines through to bottling of the finished wine actually takes place on site. Turns out the Bodega is also a hotel, but closed at the moment for renovations - Vera Estenas.

Dormant vines at Vera Estenas

Vera Estenas vineyard 

Parking for the night at Vera Estenas

Outdoor seating at the Bodega

Vera Estenas

Too cold for wine tasting outdoors 

Vera Estenas grounds lit up with fairy lights 😃

The Bodega tasting room

Dave very happy with our purchases 🍷 🤣

The following day we stayed inland and headed to another stunning Natural Park close by at Chera. Unfortunately we could only stay towards the outskirts as with our best Spanish, we realised that there was a 2 metre width restriction further on, and sadly our van is 2m and 5 cm  - we didn’t want to risk 🤣 Anyway, the walk from Chera was lovely - and the valley full of bursting blossom.

Walking from Chera 

Beautiful almond blossoms 

Thank goodness for the irrigation channels 🤣

Headed back into Requena - this time to visit the Cuevas De La Villa - a series of underground caves beneath the town centre. These caves date back many hundreds of years to when the Romans first brought their wine making skills to the region, and are where some of the wine was formerly produced and stored, as well as a huge grain store. It’s a labyrinth of huge caves that covers a lot of the city centre - quite spectacular 😃

Former grain store

Wine store

Requena caves

That night we stayed at a wonderful olive oil producing farm. Just like with the bodega from the night before, here was another small business, seemingly diversifying, to allow campervans to stay within their grounds. There is no up front charge, but perhaps an unspoken expectation that you might buy something. We of course were happy to oblige 🤣 We drove for a few miles along small roads and dirt tracks, and eventually arrived at this modern, Grand Design sort of structure- Olioli - a biodynamic olive farm. We were welcomed by a charming older woman, obviously the owner, who very proudly showed us hundreds of certificates of awards for their produce. Next came the olive oil tasting - just 5 to try - medal winners included 😃 We ended up buying some olive oil, as well as some olive oil soap and shampoo (hair soap as Dave calls it) 🤣 We were given free reign of the olive groves, and decided to spend the night parked under a beautiful huge tree amongst the vines. Lots of wild animal sniffs for rubes 🤣

Olioli Olive Farm

Showing off hundreds of awards for the olive oil

Olive oil tasting

Rubes happy to be here 😃

Our camp for the night

Relaxing 😎 

Leaving Requena Dave spotted a car wash facility - keen to get the van cleaned up after days of driving on dusty tracks we decided to give it a go! Although not entirely sure what we were doing (as all instructions in Spanish) we did manage a really good clean, and all for 2 euros 😃

A gleaming van! 😃

Heading back to the coast we were keen to explore the Albufera Natural Park just to the south of Valencia city - an expansive nature reserve of water, wildlife and paddy fields, all connected via small tracks and causeways - ideal for cycling around. Spent a couple of hours pottering around on our bikes, watching the huge flocks of birds, and noticing the different stages of rice growing in the paddy fields - I guess why Valencia is the home of paella 😃

Paddy fields at Albufera

Famous as a bird reserve

Rice growing

Great for cycling 

Albufera

Decided to spend the night at the beach - one of Ruby’s favourites 😃 We’d read that overnight parking was tolerated, certainly out of season, and as we’d seen a few vans parked up, decided to give it a go. As is typical, the police did drive around, but all was fine - so had a lovely quiet night 😃

Ruby’s favourite 🤩 

Rubes too frightened of the waves to go for a dip 🤣

Chilling out 😎

Interesting light formations

So Monday arrived, and we set off back inland to Navajas to meet Postie at 12 noon at the Correos station next to the Town Hall. Sounded easy enough, but trying to find it was challenging - as it turned out in the end that the meeting point was just a single table in the foyer of the Town Hall 🤣 Having worked this out (with the help of a few others 🤣), Postie duly turned up, at 12.30 rather than 12, and I signed for the package - only it turned out disappointingly that it wasn’t an envelope with my contact lenses in, it was a letter (in Spanish of course) saying that if I wanted Spanish customs to release the packet I needed to register on a specific website and authorise it, within the next 5 days, otherwise my package would be destroyed! Postie was as confused as we were, commenting that bureaucracy was definitely increasing 🤨 Fast forward now, and the end result is that I could not register on the website without a Spanish National Insurance number…….and there was no facility to contact anyone by telephone. With our level of Spanish, and no one around with good enough English to help, we came to the sad conclusion that I wasn’t going to be getting my contact lenses 😢 Totally frustrating, and first hand experience of what we keep hearing about in the media of the challenges of moving goods now between the UK and EU - this wouldn’t have been a problem for me to receive my contact lenses in Spain, posted in Uk, before we left the EU - I really do empathise with the challenges businesses are facing 😟 

So, time to move on now from the Valencia region (without contact lenses) and head further south - hopefully to the Sierra Espuna 🤞

Hasta Luego 😃