6 June – After saying in the last blog that the weather was perfect, that night the skies opened and we had a beaut electrical storm with lots of lightning and rain. In the morning it was still raining lightly so we head down the coast to an “Aires” at Peniscola. We were 100m from a great beach between two busier beaches. Thought we would do a shop on the way, only to find that virtually everything is closed on Sunday.

7 June – We hopped on the bikes and rode 5 km to the castle (1450 ish) at Peniscola on the headland. Great views and a fascinating place. We have followed the local custom and have been having a siesta after lunch in the heat of the day, back down to our beach for more sun and swims. The water is really warm now. We are back to our perfect weather.

8 June – We had a big shop before bypassing Valencia and stopping at a camp at El Saler, 10km down the road from Valenica. After washing virtually everything we own we walked to another beach in sight of Port Valencia. We walked into the village of El Saler for a birthday dinner. Great paella!!

9 June – Off on the bikes for a huge ride (25km) on great cycleways back to Valencia and the America’s Cup harbour. It all seems a bit deserted now! They were setting up the streets for the European F1 Grand Prix in about a fortnight.

Cycling in France and Spain has been great. There are cycleways everywhere both in the cities and even the small towns. NZ has along way to go if they think they are cycle friendly!!

We drove, after lunch, up into the orange groves and are in an “Aires” with orange trees all around us.

Very peaceful. We were the only people in over night.

10 June – We headed down some smaller roads thru the mountains back to coast. This was a magnificent drive passing some lovely mountain villages. Some of the mountain scenery reminded us of Yosemite National Park in California. We had lunch at a little village before dropping down to the coast. We are now on the Costa Blanca near Benidorm. We biked to the local beach for a swim and got completely lost coming back!!