January Jaunts

We took a day trip to some caves 700m above El Campello, called El Canelobre, which translates to The Candelabra. We enjoyed the view of the whole bay of Alicante and the Monnegre river valley from the viewpoint at the entrance. The caves are said to be Spain’s largest and deepest cave system, only opened to the public in the middle of the 20th Century.

The internal temperature of the cave is a steady 17c, which after the early morning breeze outside, seemed very warm. The cave is just one cavern, containing one of the highest vaults in all of Spain, with a height of 70 meters. The internal space is more than 80,000m2 which is often used for musical concerts, and is full of impressive shapes such as stalactites, stalagmites, columns and jellyfish, among many others.

During the Civil War, the cave was used as a repair shop for aircraft by the Republican army, and it was at that time that the current tunnel of access to the cavity was drilled, before then access was through a narrow crack in the rocks. Sadly there was no visible record of the military activity.

The caves were formed many millions of years ago, but they are still very slowly changing at a rate of just 1cm every 100 years!

In El Campello, we came across a wine merchant extraordinaire! If it wasn’t “dry January”, we could have and would have spent a fortune!! 47,000 bottles, 7106 different wines, dating from 1730 to 2019, valued from €2 to €10,000.00.

We also, finally, got to meet some very old friends of my parents. Jim and Veronica Eadsforth have been friends with my parents since before I was born, Jim and my Dad were in the army together! I had met them when I was a teenager, but don’t certainly don’t remember, so we headed to their local town on a wet windy Sunday morning and stopped in a cafe for a coffee, lunch and catch up. It was lovely to finally meet them 🙂

As a final farewell before we left Spain, we went into Alicante for an evening, checked into a hotel and went out to dinner with Mum and Dad, before heading to an intimate flamenco show. It was a lovely evening, the highlight was staggering back to the hotel just before midnight nursing hangovers! Dad managed to eat a full cooked breakfast the next day, so he couldn’t have been that bad!!

We left Alicante, Benidorm and Southern Spain to head inland for 2 nights in Zaragoza.