The world always looks better from behind a smile
Pre breakfast on Wednesday, we made the decision to leave the campsite; it was more of an overnight stop place than somewhere to hang out for a day. But first we took a look at the beach, a ten-minute walk over the road, just to check that we weren’t missing out on a spectacular beach. It wasn’t spectacular in any way whatsoever. It was rather dirty and gravelly, the views of Valencia docks made it……..interesting, and then there were the dingly-danglys. Nobody had any clothes on; though one man had so many tattoos, that I initially thought he was clothed!!! One chap even arrived naked; he was proudly strolling through the car park and along the path to the beach with absolutely nothing on. So feeling rather overdressed and wary of the next day having a 42°C forecast we decided to move further north with a bad case of the giggles.
We headed into Valencia, out to the Marina, and along the exceedingly long beach north of the city, all of which looked quite nice. Then we picked up the A7 motorway and drove past endless plantations of oranges, to the outskirts of Castellón De La Plana. From there we headed inland in search of three villages. The book said “Onda, a pottery-making centre”. We fancied getting a nice flat cheese platter and there was apparently a castle there too. The approach in from the A7 all the way to Onda, on both sides of the road, was 7km of floor and wall tile factories and warehouses. We were stunned. We never managed to find an old part of town and couldn’t find an easy route to the derelict castle, so we carried on to our next village of choice.
I had picked up a local paper three weeks ago, which described Fanzara as a small village of only 323, mainly elderly, inhabitants, which, like so many Spanish villages, was dying. Last year, Javier López decided to launch the MIAU, the Unfinished Museum of Urban Art. He invited fifteen of Spain’s top street artists to spend four days in the village and paint a wall in exchange for room and board. There were no limits to what they painted, but the artists had to respect the fact that the villagers had to live with what was painted around their village.
They ended up with 44 murals and if the residents don’t like any, they can paint over them. But the whole process was such a success that more artists have been invited back in July this year to add to or change any. We spent about an hour wandering around the tiny back streets staring up at walls and around every corner, picture hunting, and then we stopped for a cold drink before heading on to village number three.
The book said “L’Alcora, known for artistic ceramic production”; ah ha, this is where we’ll find some local artisans making nice platters. Nope. As we drove through Ribesalbes, the tile factories started to line the road again and they continued all the way to L’Alcora. We found our way through L’Alcora, not an artisan in sight, not a platter to be seen and the factories continued pass the town, all the way down to the turquoise reservoir and carried on to the next junction for the motorway. Even some roundabouts, of which there were many, had some walls covered in nicely coloured and patterned tiles. We must have passed hundreds of tile factories and as for all the pallets stacked high with tiles and firmly wrapped in plastic, we must have seen tens of thousands! Ah well, at least Fanzara actually had what we wanted to see.
Back on the next stretch of the A7, we passed masses of huge trucks, there seemed to be more trucks than cars. I’m not sure what they were carrying; could have been tiles, could have been oranges? One truck was definitely carrying tiles because it was laying on its side, in our fast lane, and down across the middle divider. Broken tiles were spread around the truck which had split open on one side. I hope the driver was okay.
Our final stop was at Camping Eden, very near to the beach at Peniscola. We had pre-arranged to meet David and Nicky there, who we first met last year in a campsite near Muros, northern Spain. Yet another bad plan for the day, on our part. Our last email telling them we were arriving that afternoon and to put the kettle on, hadn’t been received by them and they weren’t expecting us until the following day. When we knocked on their caravan door, they were trying to have an afternoon siesta after a big lunch, oops! But we ended the day with a huge plate of tasty, spicy prawns and bread, cooked beautifully by Nicky and we talked till late in to the evening. And of course, all is well that ends well, and it was.
