3 September 2019

We woke with no plans, no expectations and nowhere to sleep.

We approached our receptionist and asked where he would go, if he had a tank full of gas and could wear sunglasses! ( in the daylight!)

Xátiva, according to google, is not a place you would visit in summer. Far too hot!

It has a castle on top of a mountain. Far too high!

Heat and height! Fantastic!

As luck would have it, we accidentally stumbled across this guy and his “tourist train”.

We bumped and bobbled over cobble stones to climb the steep zig zag track up to the bottom gate of the fortification. The best 4€ ever spent.

Grahame breached the lower gate and we made our final attack on the inner fortress. We had help from one or two other heathens and ……. mission accomplished!

This lot were no help at all. They were heading in the wrong direction! Escaping?

The views were amazing.

Apparently Hannibal had a little stay in the 2nd century BC and one of his sons was born here. And when James 1st of Aragon defeated the Moors in May 1244 , and took possession, he was pretty pleased saying “it was the most beautiful castle”.

There was some cool tiles:

Some nice water features:

And some lovely plants.

All in all pretty impressive!

We drove back to Valencia airport and dropped off Car no.2.

Emergency response crew came To the rescue once more and organised a taxi from Valencia airport back to Castellón.

By 6.30 pm we had a car, but no plans and still nowhere to spend the night.

We drove south for two hours, past Valencia and Xátiva ( been there, done that) and ended up in the town of Alcoi, a little north of Alicante.

We jagged the Airbnb jackpot.

Our very own villa. With our very own chapel!!

More tomorrow. Night!!!