Castellón: Marina's Great Escape

Hola!

Leaving our summer retreat in the Pyrenees on the way to Castellón. I, Marina, felt very excited about two things: the fact that I was going to drive alone through roads I hadn’t travelled down before, and that I was about to spend 4 days at the beach with 3 of my very good yoga friends.

I drove through the arid lands surrounding Zaragoza and turned onto the Autovía del Ebro, a stretch of road I’d never seen before. The color of the reservoir near Alcañiz, La Estanca de Alcañiz, and the village of Morella, on top of a hill, transfix me and I make a mental note to come back and see both places some other time.

La Estanca de Alcañiz

But what most struck me was the landscape between Alcañiz and Morella. After driving through the moon-like landscapes of Zaragoza, I pass through stretches of endless rolling hills densely covered with shining, light-green, round Mediterranean pine trees, an image that moves me deeply, reminding me of the deep forests of pointed pines, pino negro, that I’d seen earlier that morning, as I was leaving the Tena Valley, high in the Pyrenees near Jaca.

That density of trees is one of the main reasons I love our summer mountain escape so much.

Between Alcañiz and Morella, Millions of Trees!

It reminds me of the legend that I learned as a child, that Spain used to be so densely covered with trees, that a squirrel could cross it from top to bottom without once touching the ground.

It makes me truly happy to see these dense forests somewhere I would never have expected to find them.

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I arrive at my destination, Cervera del Maestre, a village 20 minutes inland from the Castellón coast, to find an old castle on top of a hill - currently being renovated and open to the public sometime in autumn - with the houses flowing down the hillside below the castle walls.

Cervera del Maestre

I expected to find a much smaller village, as my friend had explained that it’s mostly empty, “un pueblo abandonado” she’d called it, and indeed, despite having 500 residents, a good portion of the houses are empty, and some are quite run down.

My yoga friends and I have come to stay with our friend Sandra, who has fulfilled her dream to buy a house near Alcossebre, the coastal town where she used to come on holiday as a child.

She’s been lucky to find a house that was renovated nicely some years ago, with really interesting features like the lovely staircase, wooden beams across all the ceilings, and a column that a local historian, while visiting her one day, suggested might have come from ruins of the town castle.

Sandra’s house, interior

Her house follows the curious shape of most of houses in this town: narrow and tall, 5 stories in total plus a roof terrace, with a staircase in the middle that separates two rooms per floor.

Backstreets, Cervera del Maestre

I learn while visiting the old olive-oil mill - with its original and impressive 12 meter-long wooden press from the 17th century - that conditions used to be very hard for the villagers, working this dry, steep land, covered with olive trees (some of them milenarios - over a thousand years old) scattered across terraces to deal with the steep hills around the village.

Despite the town’s falling population, there’s a busy wood-oven bakery in town where we bought the best anchovy coca I’ve ever tasted - its thin bread base generously covered with tomato and a couple of anchovies - and a delicious coca tierna, similar to Italian focaccia.

The local bakery

Despite being August we manage to escape the packed touristy beaches of Peñíscola, to find a few pebble-covered coves which are practically empty. We spend up to two hours at a time in the perfect temperature of the deep turquoise water, swimming and happily chatting together.

Below, in this week’s bonus guide for our generous paid subscribers, we’re sharing the very quietest beaches and secret seas Marina visited with her friends on the Castellón coast...