Monday 6 June
Driving today with an aim to find a sleepy little beach town beyond Valencia. We had to stop off at Bennidorm and see what all the fuss is about. There is a huge ex pat Brit population here and from time to time they get a bad wrap for wild stag/hen party shenanigans (cheap weekly package deals from the UK) but in the main they are retired folk lapping up the sun.
It looks horrendous in terms of towers block apartments but if you were on a pension living in a tower block in Manchester, I think Bennidorm might be a bit attractive. 24degrees at 8.30am, no wind, great walking along the beaches, your pension paid direct.to you👍. There is a lot of discussion in the Brit Spanish papers re the decision to stay or leave the EU as it could change the ex pat health care options. There are British supermarkets , shops and English signage everywhere.
There are plenty of sun chairs for basting on and the lager can be delivered to your lounger from the pub across the road.
On a traffic roundabout in Bennidorm I found the sculpture of the day, beautiful.
Quite a contrast to our beautiful Bay of Islands beaches back in New Zealand where more often than not we would have the entire beach to ourselves.
We found our kind of beach, an old fashioned sleepy resort, Oropesa, but more on that tomorrow, the sea is calling, swimming time.
Sunday 5th June, Alicante
A little Alicante exploration. As it was a Sunday everyone was at the playa soaking up the sun. It was about 26degrees when we set off mid morning so we knew it was going to be a hot one. The waterfront has this fantastic paving and there was a lot of promenading going on. There are a lot of ex pat Brits here and we heard as much English as Spanish spoken. The castle looked fantastic but way too hot to hike up there in the mid day sun.
There are so many apartments here and nearly everyone has a car so parking is horrendous. They have 'parking pimps' that wave you into a park and then ask for a tip. We came across this in Seville and wondered why all these people we didn't know were waving at us, literally jumping into the traffic and waving...... dangerous. Anyway we just zoom in to the parking buildings, no hassle with the parking pimps that way.
By 2pm 36degrees so shade was necessary and we made for the Palmeral of Elche. Great spot, 97varites of palm tree reflecting Elche's historic relationship with the humble palm tree, which it turns out is not a tree as such, more on Google. Anyway there are over 70,000 palms in orchards still and the city of Elche has approx 200,000, yikes! They are protected wth UNESCO World lHeritag status as they reflect the exchange between
Sculpture of the day comes to you from Alicante waterfront, I think it would look great in Wellington harbour.
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