Valencian Community

In the north, around Castellón, the land rises quickly into pine and scrub, and the towns hold their ground on hilltops. Morella, further inland, is a fortress of honey-coloured stone that seems to have been set down on its ridge and left there. The centre of the region, around the city of Valencia, is flatter and busier. Here the huerta, the old irrigated farmland, is still worked in small plots, and the city itself has turned its former riverbed into a long green park that runs through its middle. Further south, around Alicante, the character changes again. The land is drier, the mountains are bare limestone, and the light is harder and whiter, with a sharper edge to the air.

A day here can begin in the reed country south of the city, where the Albufera lagoon opens out between dunes and rice fields. You move slowly along narrow channels in a flat-bottomed boat, watching herons stand motionless in the shallows while the reeds hiss on either side. By midday you might be on the coast at Peñíscola, where a castle sits on a rock above a crescent of sand and the old town climbs in white steps towards the walls. In the afternoon, Dénia offers a harbour full of fishing boats and a warren of streets behind it, where the cafés spill onto squares shaded by plane trees. Further down the coast, Altea's blue-domed church rises above whitewashed houses that stack themselves up the hillside, and from its terrace you can see the sea and the mountains at the same time.

What lingers after such a day is the way the region holds its extremes together. You can walk through orange groves in the morning, climb a mountain path before lunch, and be swimming again by evening, and none of these feels like a detour from the others. The coast is part of this larger country rather than a separate place, and it shares the same habits: long meals, slow evenings, and a readiness to sit outside until the lights come on. Leaving is easy to postpone. Most visitors find themselves already planning a way back, perhaps by a different road, through a different village, to see what the next valley looks like.