After a very relaxing night at our home in Liria, we parents get up early.
Today we’re up at 6 am, as we are covering much less distance today. Our kids will sleep late until around 10 am and then have a Spanish breakfast at one of the local Churrerias before leaving towards San Juan on their own.
TW560’s battery is still at 30°C – outside temperatures at 6 am are around 21°C. This is the perfect temperature for traveling in a TWIKE! We’re both looking forward to this last leg of the trip – for me it will be the second time I’ve traveled to southern Spain by TWIKE and I’m sure it will not be the last. (And there is so much more to see by TWIKE!)
Let’s go!
Driving towards Valencia – we will be crossing through the town to get to the sea – we are treated to the same glorious pre-dawn show of colours.
And hey, with a co-pilot, there are pictures of me, too! 🙂
As yesterday, eventually, we get hungry and get some pastries and coffee to start the day.
We enter Valencia – which is absolutely worth a visit – and have to fight our way through the morning traffic.
As always, weaving in and out of traffic is easy and fun with a TWIKE. Many surprised morning commuters smile at us and give us their thumbs-up.
As we finally leave the city, we’re going to continue to stick to the coast as much as possible. Today’s diet of roads looks just like yesterday’s: Flat – hills – flat again, with some minor detours for some POI’s.
As always, without some prior planning and analysis of the roads, we would never have found the ones we are currently driving on – like this gem of a single-lane road:
Temperatures are rising and the canopy goes back on earlier than yesterday. At least at the sea, we are treated to a nice breeze.
Most of the time, however, if there isn’t a very small single lane road available, we’re stuck driving from village to village, from roundabout to roundabout and always on the lookout for backbreaking speed-bumps we might have missed. (Going over them at normal speed really hurts both us and TW560!)
Shortly before Denia, there is a very hilly part of our trip that really surprised us, as we climbed to 300m in no time on very windy and steep roads. Given the heat I was very much looking out not to overheat the motor or electronics!
The weird thing was that we both felt as if we were somewhere much more alpine than just a mere few kilometres away from the sea!
One of today’s POI’s is the lighthouse above Adunas bay. Getting there involved driving along a ridge high above the sea and a forest before suddenly opening up into this incredible 300° view of the sea and the bay.
We park our TWIKE in the shade and get out – there is a viewpoint just a few hundred metres down a rocky path. This detour was well worth the time!
…and we get another iconic picture with TW560!
Getting back to the road towards Adunas sees us driving back along the frankly incredible windy road above the sea – see for yourself. I keep repeating myself, but I’ll never get used to this kind of view from my TWIKE (which is a good thing as I’m planning to drive along many a coast in the future! 🙂 )
Adunas bay greets us with a very nice small town and perfect beaches – our route for today, unsurprisingly, takes us just there!
As always TWIKE 560 fits in just fine!
Denia & Calpe rock are nice to look at but during summer are completely overrun by non-Spanish tourists.
This is also true for infamous Benidorm which is just like Las Vegas: created just for the visitors, complete with it’s own cultural (UK-) microcosm – definitely not Spain and definitely not a place I would like to spend my vacation.
San Juan, although close to Alicante, is one of the last places on the Costa Blanca where signs at shops are not in English (…or Russian, for that matter) and people expect you to be able to speak Spanish. No pub food or drinking excesses. Restaurants open at 9 pm and dinner is usually at 10 pm or later. Spain as it should be.
We’re getting close to our final destination for today!
Just within 100 km vegetation has changed markedly. Suddenly everything is brown, there is no grass and everything is just dry and arid. Temperatures soar to 39°C and are forecast to hit 40°C today.
Suddenly, as last time, things go really quickly – We enter via El Campello and drive along the 7 km-long beach all the way to our place which is right on the far end of the beach and allows us to take in the sights and check if all the restaurants and places we know are still there.
All looks good – our favourite places are still there!
And with this, without much fanfare, we arrive at our apartment – our trip is over! (The picture taken is the exact same one like the one I took when I arrived with JC at the exact same point during TDE2012, 7(!) years ago)
Our kids come to open the gate. They’ve already done all the shopping necessary and we’re basically ready to go to beach 🙂
Now comes the interesting part – how much energy did I consume?
TDE2019 Stats:
day 1: _180.5 km / _9729 Wh / 53.9 Wh/km / 00.00 CHF
day 2: _417.5 km / 14669 Wh / 35.1 Wh/km / 00.00 CHF
day 3: _393.5 km / 13528 Wh / 34.4 Wh/km / 00.00 CHF
day 4: _383.2 km / 14019 Wh / 36.6 Wh/km / 00.00 CHF
day 5: _411.9 km / 15873 Wh / 38.5 Wh/km / 00.00 CHF
day 6: _237.1 km / _8168 Wh / 36.3 Wh/km / 02.64 CHF
Total: 2023.7 km / 75986 Wh / 37.5 Wh/km / 02.64 CHF
After all this distance, I’m glad to be able to park TW560 and give it and myself a break for 9 days. My drive back to Switzerland will be another major trip – but that’s for another entry 🙂
Thank you for following this blog and as always – reach out if you want to know anything!