Benimaurell in Valencia

Getting away to sunny places so early in the year has been wonderful but I must admit that my lack of Spanish does make things a bit more challenging and I found this to be particularly true on the HF Holiday that I was leading at Benimaurell in Valencia last week.

One of the best things about the place is its isolation but that means that you are unlikely to find people who talk English outside the hotel; including the manager of the transport company. Valencian is a dialect of Catalan so, although I have no doubt that people would understand you if you spoke Spanish, it is not their first language.

Many of the walks are in the local area and, on the two days when we use a coach to travel to Lliber and to Parcent, the journeys are short. This means that you really get to explore the local area which is famous for it's dramatic rock architecture and the Trails built by the Mozerabs.

HF used the hotel a few years ago. In fact we went on the holiday in 2010. They stopped going there for a while but are now back. We were there for the second and third week of the new holiday. The Field Adviser was there with me for a week and he'd had to make a lot of amendments to both the walks and the walks descriptions. This doesn't make things any easier.

Compared to similar HF European holidays, the walking is fairly easy which is fine on a lovely sunny day as people can come back to the hotel and relax by the pool. We had several days like this but also some cloudy days. In fact, when we arrived it was into day 2 of 4 days of torrential rain that created a lake behind Isberts Dam in the Barranc de l’Infern (Hell's Ravine). Isbert had the dam built to create a reservoir in the ravine but all the water drained away through the limestone.

View from Hotel: Reservoir behind Isbert's Dam before it drains away

Getting to the dry side of the dam involves going through the 90m tunnel built during its construction. After all the rain this was a little tricky for some of the way

The tunnel

The hotel is in a wonderful location just above the village of Benimaurell where the two small shops are indistinguishable from the other houses unless you know where to look. The food was excellent and by 10pm most people were ready for bed, full of lovely wine and local food.

Hotel Alahuar above the village of Benimaurell

I would definitely recommend it as a relaxing holiday set amongst amazing scenery in an area rich with history. I must admit that I prefer the higher mountains myself. My next HF lead is in Schenna in the South Tyrol. More my kind of country.