Kiko Beach

Our favourite beach! 25 minutes drive from us towards the town of Oliva is a lovely, natural, fine white sand beach.

The whole of the coastline here, along the Costa Blanca and Costa del Azahar (the orange blossom coast), has numerous beautiful beaches - some stoney, some sandy, some busy and some quiet. Visitors are literally spoilt for choice!

Kiko beach is approached through miles of orange groves (or, at least, the bit we go to is). Parking is easy – just pull in at the roadside where the road peters out just before the beach itself, then a short walk through the dunes and you can take your pick where to settle down – there are acres of space!



Later during the afternoons kite surfers arrive to enjoy their sport, which is quite exciting to watch…..




The sea is comfortably warm, and shallow for a long way out, making this a very safe area for swimming.

Within a few minutes stroll there is a great beach bar where you can relax to background chill-out music whilst enjoying an ice-cold San Miguel...or two :-)

Out and About

We had a week to ourselves last week ‘in-between guests’ so took the opportunity to explore some of our local walks.

The countryside that can be seen behind our house from our roof terraces contains numerous signposted walks. This gives us the advantage of not having to drive anywhere to get to a walk!

The particular route that we chose is a variety of stoney paths and tracks and took about an hour or so to complete at a leisurely pace. From our house we headed out towards the foot of the mountains and along to our neighbouring village of Ayelo de Rugat then via a circular route back to Montichelvo.






This route is mostly through cultivated areas with an abundance of fruit trees, vines and olives etc. Hopefully the photographs show this well.

Indoor Pilota!

A change from the version that is played in the street we visited a Trinquete (a purpose built indoor court) in nearby Bellreguard to watch a match this week.

Being purpose-built the spectators seating areas are raised giving a much better view (and understanding) of the game. We sat in the gallery at what we understand is the ‘safest’ end to watch from! The accompanying photos show the good view that we had.

The player’s hands are fascinating in the way that they have to be prepared for the game. They are used as the racquets themselves to hit the fast moving hard leather covered ball from one end of the court to the other. The player’s hands take about an hour to make up with ‘armour’ consisting of leather thimbles and pads together with metal plates to protect vulnerable joints, all bound with padded plaster to keep everything in place.

Our Spanish neighbour who went with us to the match introduced us to a friend of his who manufactures the hard leather thimble-like pieces that form part of the players hand armour. Each ‘thimble’ takes about 15 minutes to make and the thick hide has to be soaked in water in order to be moulded and stitched into shape.



These matches are played regularly and are a recommended visit for our guests that enjoy sport and want to see something different as this sport is only played in a big way in the Valencia Region.