01/06/18 – 02/06/18 – Xàbia
When I used to work for a Spanish company based near Alicante, I had often heard the town Xàbia (or Jávea) mentioned as a nice place to visit, so as were headed through that way, we thought it would be a good place to spend a couple of days on a campsite given we had just spent 9/11 previous nights in free aires/wild camping (A new record for us I think) We would have stayed away from the campsite longer but, boring as it may be, we had laundry and other Moho servicing necessitates to take care of.
We stayed at Camping Jávea – A large site with tightly pack pitches, and not much privacy between them (Something the vast majority of Spanish Campsites share) our Moho is just over 6.5 meters long and I found it difficult to negotiate some of the bends. The site seemed to attract a lot of Brits and Dutch – many of them long termers (One English couple had been there 18 months.) The swimming pool was excellent and there was a bar and small restaurant which we didn’t try out.
We came to realise after being there about half a day, that we don’t really like campsites (Spanish ones at least) – too many people, too tight spaces plus, we don’t really make the most of them – its more the convenience of the services that we go for – plus you can take a shower for as long as you like….something moholife doesn’t really allow for!
We took the bikes along the coast the first evening to Playa Primer Muntanyar / Benissero – the longer of the 2 beaches in Xàbia. This was primarily stoney with a few beach bars. We didn’t stop and headed on to what we had heard was the nicer of the 2 beaches – a much smaller cove, Platja De l’Arenal. This was a sandy strip with a promenade and lots of bars/restaurants all facing onto it.
To be honest, we were a little disappointed. It seemed like a bit of a culture shock to see so many Brits there seeing as we had hardly seen any since we left 5 weeks ago. I’m not sure why we were so surprised though – We were on the Costa Blanca.
The following day we cycled into the old part of town on the hill – its very steep with limited places to park your bikes but definitely worth the effort of cycling up the hill. Very well kept narrow streets, opening onto large public buildings or churches, so your view of the end do of the road is often met with something intriguing, making you want to explore further.
Was it worth a stop-yes, would we go back again, probably not.
