Anna

Anna's acequia network still carries snowmelt from the surrounding Serra d'Anna down stone channels laid centuries ago. Walk the upper lanes at dawn and you'll hear water before you see it—steady trickles feeding vegetable plots squeezed between pastel walls. This isn't ornamental heritage. Local growers still divert flows using sluice boards carved from olive wood, timing irrigation by the same star patterns their grandfathers learnt at the agricultural cooperative.

The village sits 340 m above the Albaida valley floor, high enough for night temperatures to drop ten degrees below coastal Xàtiva, 25 km away. Spring mornings can start at 8 °C even when Benidorm beaches are already topping 20 °C. Bring layers if you're visiting between October and April; afternoon mist clings to the citrus terraces and can soak a cotton shirt faster than expected rain.

The Lagoon That Shouldn't Exist

L'Albufera de Anna feels misplaced, a turquoise oval hemmed by reeds and ringed by limestone bluffs more typical of the Guadix badlands than inland Valencia. Geologists call it a polje: a sinkhole sealed by natural cement, filled each year by subterranean rivers that surface at the Fuente del Chorrador. Summer weekends turn the clearing into a Valencian version of the Lake District car park—cars queue from 10:30 am, families lug cool boxes along the 400 m footpath, and lifeguards whistle at anyone attempting a sneaky dive from the cliff ledge. Arrive before nine or after six and you'll share the water with only a few serious swimmers and the occasional heron.

Entry costs €3 in high season, collected at a portable kiosk that closes when capacity is reached (150 bathers). There are no sun-lounger rentals, no pedalo ponds, just a grass fringe that turns to dust by August. Plastic bottles are banned; take a reusable one and fill it at the stone fountain where the overflow runs straight back into the lagoon. Changing facilities amount to two breeze-block cubicles; most locals wrap a towel on the shore and get on with it.

Stone, Lime and the Smell of Wet Earth

The old centre fits inside a ten-minute spiral. Calle de la Fuente narrows until two people can't pass without touching shoulders; centuries of mule carts have scalloped the kerbs into smooth curves. Houses rise two storeys, ground-floor stone bleached almost white, upper walls washed oxblood or indigo depending on which batch of cal the owner mixed that decade. Renovations appear every third doorway—folding glass, micro-balconies, the occasional London-grey exterior that sticks out like a Barbour at a paella contest. Planning rules now insist new paint matches existing mineral tones; a quiet admission that Anna's appeal lies in looking like itself rather than a showroom.

The Iglesia de la Asunción crowns the modest hill. Its Baroque façade went up after the 1748 earthquake levelled the medieval nave; step inside and the air smells of candle wax and the faint damp of walls that never fully dry. Opening hours follow the priest's schedule: usually 10-12 and 6-8, but if the side door's ajar you can slip in for free and hope the automatic lights click on. There's no audioguide, no donation box shoved under your nose, just a single fresco of the Assumption that locals claim resembles María, the baker's daughter, painted from life in 1782.

Eating, Briefly and Well

Weekend tables disappear fast. The restaurants cluster on Plaça de l'Ajuntament, each offering more or less the same short menu because they all buy from the same huerta trucks on Thursday morning. Expect arròs de verdures cooked over vine prunings, thin-crusted coca topped with onions and sardines, and glasses of cloudy home-fermented mistela that taste like alcoholic orange barley water. A three-course lunch with wine runs €18-22; if you want paella request it when booking because the rice needs forty minutes and most chefs prepare only one pan per sitting. Vegetarians do better here than on the coast—local growers supply whatever is bolting that week, so broad-bean stew in April becomes aubergine bake by July.

Walking Off the Rice

Paths radiate from the last street lamps within minutes. Follow the acequia south-east and you reach the Font de la Senyora, a chapel-sized spring house where women still scrub tablecloths on stone washboards. Continue another kilometre and the irrigation channel peters out into almond terraces; climb the ridge beyond for an hour and the view opens across the entire Canal de Navarrés, a patchwork of olive and cereal that looks uncannily like the North Downs viewed from Box Hill, only the browns are warmer and the farm tracks straight as Roman roads.

Serious hikers can link to the PR-V 147 circular, a 12 km loop that tops 700 m on the Creu de la Mola before dropping back through pine and rosemary. The route is way-marked but carries no mobile signal; download the track beforehand. Winter walkers should allow extra time—January frost slicks the limestone slabs, and fog can roll up the valley faster than a commuter train out of Liverpool Street.

When Not to Come

August midday is brutal. The lagoon water reaches 28 °C and feels like soup; stone walls radiate heat long after sunset. Bank-holiday weekends see day-trippers from Valencia triple the population, cars wedge bumper-to-bumper along Avenida de la Constitución, and the bakery runs out of ensaïmada by 9:30 am. If your calendar is flexible, aim for late April or mid-October: temperatures hover around 22 °C, the acequias run full, and restaurant owners have time to explain why their artichokes taste better than the supermarket's.

Rainy season—October to November—turns the lanes into rivulets and the lagoon an opaque green. Photographers love the saturated stone colours, but hiking boots with decent tread are essential. One cloudburst can swell the normally placid Albufera outlet into a brown torrent strong enough to knock a child sideways; lifeguards close the swim area at the first thunderclap.

Getting There, Leaving Again

No train reaches Anna. From Valencia's Estació del Nord take the Xàtiva line, alight at La Pobla Llarga, then hop on the L-710 bus for the final 18 km. The service runs twice daily on weekdays, once on Saturday, never on Sunday. Hiring a car at Valencia airport adds flexibility: the CV-590 twists through orange groves and takes 55 minutes, longer if you stop for the roadside honey sold in washed-out coke bottles. Parking is free on the eastern edge of the village; ignore the temptation to squeeze into the historic core—lanes tighten to 1.8 m and reversing uphill against a delivery van is nobody's idea of a holiday highlight.

Anna won't keep you busy for a week. It will, however, remind you what Spanish villages were like before Instagram geotags. Come for the water, stay for the bread oven smell at dawn, leave before the coach parties work out what they're missing.