Cañada

The 08:03 from València Nord drops you at Benaguasil in twenty-two minutes. From the platform you can already see the ridge that hides Canada, 558 metres up and five kilometres beyond the last suburban block. No taxis queue here; the bus to the village leaves at 09:10 on Tuesdays and Fridays only. Otherwise you walk, past irrigation channels still running with melt-water from last night’s thunderstorm, until the tarmac turns to single-track and the citrus smell of the coast is replaced by something drier—almond sap, warm stone, sheep.

That transition from city to sierra is the village’s real attraction. Canada isn’t a manicured “white village” for coach tours; it’s a working scatter of 1,210 souls whose front gardens grow onions rather than bougainvillea, whose bar opens when the owner finishes feeding her chickens, and whose only traffic jam happens each August when the travelling funfair squeezes onto the football pitch for the fiesta of San Roque.

The Almond Calendar

Visit between mid-February and mid-March and the slopes below the cemetery glow pink-white. The blossom isn’t the uninterrupted snow-drift Instagrammers hope for—fields are small, mixed with olive and abandoned vineyard—but the perfume drifts for days and the morning light on the valley is sharp enough to make even phone photos look competent. Farmers welcome walkers as long as you stick to the stone-edged paths; dogs on leads, gates closed. By May the petals have blown into the gutters and the conversation turns to rain: 300 mm a year is the average, so every shower is noted like cricket scores on the blackboard outside the agricultural co-op.

Summer is hot and unambiguous—34 °C by noon—yet the altitude knocks the edge off the humidity that suffocates the coast. Afternoons are for siesta; the bakery shuts at 13:00 and reopens at 17:00 if the baker wakes up. Evenings stretch: at 21:30 the church bell still rings for the rosary, but teenagers have commandeered the concrete benches around the five-a-side court, comparing mopeds and Spotify playlists. Buy a caña in the only open bar and you’ll overhearValencian, Spanish and, increasingly, English spoken with a Home-Counties lilt—weekenders whose parents bought ruined barns during the 2008 crash and now argue politely over roof tiles.

What Passes for Sightseeing

The parish church of San Roque won’t make the cover of any glossy guide. Its bell-tower was rebuilt in 1948 after lightning split the original Moorish brick, and the interior smells of wax and mouse traps. Stay for the Saturday-evening Mass, however, and you’ll witness the village singing itself: elderly women in black maintain the medieval hymn line while the priest—born in Alicante, trained in Galway—delivers his homily in Castilian with an Irish cadence. No tickets, no dress code, but arrive on time; the heavy doors clang shut at 19:00 sharp.

Below the nave, two streets of ochre houses enclose a triangle of flagstones grandly labelled Plaza Mayor. The metal chairs outside Bar Raquel are screwed to the ground—less theft, more deterrence against roaming livestock. Order a café amb llet (70 cents if you stand, 90 cents if you sit) and you can study the stone coats of arms grafted onto 19th-century façades: former silk traders reminding nobody in particular that the valley once fed looms in Alcoy thirty kilometres north.

Walk south along Calle de la Virgen and the houses thin into allotments. A signed footpath—“Ruta de los Almendros”, 4.3 km, no shade—loops through three hamlets now used mainly for storing tractors. The council has way-marked it with cheerful blue paint that fades faster than budgets allow; take a paper map or risk ending up in somebody’s potato row. Midway you’ll pass a limestone outcrop pitted with 13th-century Muslim irrigation sluices. No interpretation board, just a bench sponsored by the local undertaker—subtle encouragement to rest.

Eating Without Show

Canada has two restaurants, one bakery, zero Michelin aspirations. Weekend lunch is served at Casa Blanca, where the set menu del día costs €12 and changes according to what Antonio finds at the morning market in Villena. Expect gazpacho in summer, lentil stew thick enough to support a spoon upright in February, and rabbit with garlic whenever the hunter at the next table remembers to bring his surplus. Vegetarians get eggs—fried, scrambled or tortilla—because health-and-safety won’t let the kitchen serve foraged esparragos to strangers.

Thursday is paella day in the social club, but you need to add your name to the list by Wednesday 14:00. Foreigners are welcomed, though you’ll be charged an extra euro for “postre del extranjero”, a joke that has outlived every Brexit headline. Wine comes from a cooperative in neighbouring Pinoso; it’s €3.50 a bottle, tastes of graphite and disappears faster than water.

For self-caterers the bakery opens at 06:30, selling still-warm coca—Valencia’s answer to focaccia—topped with sugar and pine nuts. Pair it with local almonds (€5 a kilo from the honesty box on Camí de la Font) and you have breakfast for under two euros. The village shop stocks UHT milk, tinned tuna and, mysteriously, imported custard creams priced like duty-free.

Getting There, Getting Out

Canada sits 45 km inland from Alicante airport. Hire cars reach the village in 40 minutes via the A-31, but the last 12 km twist through pine plantations where sat-nav loses signal and goats have right of way. Petrol stations are scarce—fill up at Villena. In winter the CV-620 over the ridge can ice over; chains are recommended, though locals simply wait for midday sun.

Public transport demands patience: ALSA runs one daily bus from Alicante at 15:15, returning at 07:00 next morning. miss it and you’re staying—there isn’t a hotel, but three households offer rooms on Airbnb for €30-€40, breakfast negotiable, Wi-Fi patchy. Cyclists appreciate the climb from Benaguasil: 250 metres of ascent in 5 km, gradient topping 10 %—enough to make the village bakery’s sponge cake feel earned.

The Catch

Peace has a price. The medical centre opens three mornings a week; for anything dramatic Valencia’s hospital is 35 minutes by ambulance, longer if the almonds are blooming and the road clogged with photographers. Shops shut on Monday, Wednesday and for any saint you’ve never heard of. Mobile coverage is two bars if the wind blows from the east, zero if it rains. And while the village is friendly, integration is slow—after ten years one British couple confessed they’re still “the new folk”.

Yet that is precisely why some visitors stay long enough to repaint a façade, plant a roof garden, learn the difference between a cypress planted for shade and one planted for a funeral. Canada offers no souvenir stalls, no flamenco nights, no craft-beer tapas trail. What it does offer is a calendar measured in blossom, harvest and fiesta, a place where the loudest noise at 22:00 is the church door bolt sliding shut and, if you listen carefully, almonds falling one by one onto corrugated iron—steady as rain before a drought.