Bicorp

The first thing you notice is the smell of rosemary honey drifting from the bakery at 7 a.m. By 7.15 the village is silent again, the baker already scrubbing trays, the only traffic a farmer in a Land Cruiser heading out to check almond blossom. Bicorp never really wakes up; it just stirs occasionally, then settles back into its limestone ridge like a cat that knows the sun will find it.

Rock, Rosé and Rosemary

Three kilometres outside town, a gravel lay-by marks the edge of the known world. From here a stony path drops into the ravine of the river Escalona, then claws 120 m up the opposite cliff to the Cueva de la Araña. The panels of Levantine rock art inside—8000 years old, UNESCO-listed, still the colour of wet terracotta—show deer, goats and the stick-figure that every Spanish schoolchild can draw from memory: a man raiding a beehive suspended from a rope of vines. The hike takes 35 minutes each way and there is no café, no ticket desk, no guide. Download the bilingual pdf before you leave the village because the on-site boards are Valencian-only and the mobile signal dies after the second bend.

Back in the twentieth-century streets, the Museo de la Miel fills two rooms of a former primary school. Display cases hold cork beehives, bronze smokers and a glass jar of honey so dark it looks like Marmite. Entrance is €2; the keeper will lift the lid so you can smell the difference between orange-blossom and thyme. Ask politely and she’ll stamp your notebook with a tiny bee motif, the same stamp used on export crates bound for Fortnum & Mason in the 1950s.

A Road that Forgets Itself

Bicorp sits 292 m above sea level, low enough for almonds to ripen but high enough that the air smells of pine rather than sea salt. The CV-566 from the A-3 motorway wriggles through a canyon of chalky cliffs where eagles nest on ledges the size of dinner plates. The tarmac is decent, but the last 15 km has no petrol station, no street lights and only one sign in English: “Slow lorry” painted crookedly on a crash barrier. Fill the tank at the Repsol outside Cheste or risk the embarrassment of flagging down a tractor for a jerry-can.

Summer brings day-trippers from Valencia city escaping the 35 °C coast. Even then the place feels half-empty: the population tops out at 650 when grandchildren arrive to be fed by grandmothers who still bake their own bread. August midday heat is brutal; walkers set off at dawn or wait until the shadows lengthen. In January the same trails are empty, the thermometer hovers at 10 °C and the rosemary flowers early, confusing the bees. Winter visitors need chains only if they venture north onto the Javalambre plateau; the village itself rarely sees snow.

What to Eat when the Hills are your Larder

Lunch options are limited to two bars and one proper restaurant, all within 200 m of the church square. At Los Botijos order chuletón de cordero—three rib chops grilled over vine shoots, served on a terracotta roof tile. A half-ración feeds two Brits and costs €14; they’ll bring a basket of warm baguette but ask for pan con tomate instead—rubbed with tomato, drizzled with the local arbequina oil, better than any butter. The house wine arrives in a porró, a glass teapot-looking thing; tip it carefully or wear the rosé.

Restaurante La Piscina (the name refers to a long-gone swimming pool) prints a menu in English so eccentric it renders “rice with rabbit” as “rice con conejo”. The honey-glazed pork ribs are mild, sticky and designed for timid palates—think Chinese takeaway meets Spanish farmyard. Pudding is usually flan, but if the owner’s wife has been baking, insist on the tarta de miel: sponge soaked in rosemary honey until it weighs twice its original mass. They don’t take cards for bills under €15; the nearest working cash machine is 18 km away in Navarrés, so pocket notes before you sit down.

Paths that End in Silence

Three way-marked trails start from the upper cemetery. The shortest (4 km, yellow blazes) loops through almond terraces to an abandoned threshing floor where swallows nest in the rafters. The longest (12 km, red/white stripes) climbs to the never-finished wind-farm service road and gives views across the entire Canal de Navarrés—olive groves rippling like corrugated iron in the breeze. Between February and April the undergrowth is bright yellow with gorse flowers; by June everything has turned the colour of digestive biscuits.

Serious walkers can link to the Hoces del Júcar, a limestone gorge deeper than Cheddar and devoid of tea shops. Allow a full day, carry two litres of water per person and don’t rely on phone mapping—Google thinks several goat tracks are drivable. Mountain rescue is based in Alzira, 55 minutes away, and they charge if they decide you were reckless.

When the Village Remembers It Owns a Sound System

Fiestas begin on 15 August with a mass sung by a choir imported from neighbouring Quesa, followed by a foam party in the polideportivo that feels surreal when you’ve spent the morning looking at Neolithic paint. Midnight brings a fireworks display launched from the ridge above the caves; the echoes bounce around the ravine for a full minute. Accommodation is impossible unless you booked the previous January, so day-trip or ask at the bar—someone’s cousin usually has a spare room and the going rate is €30 cash, towel not included.

The honey fair, third weekend of September, is more manageable. Producers set up trestle tables in the schoolyard and hand out toothpicks dipped in thyme, orange and rosemary honey. Bring an empty jam jar; they’ll fill it for €5 and seal it with the same brown wax used since the 1950s. The local marching band knows only one British tune—an off-key “Scotland the Brave”—but they play it with such enthusiasm you’ll forgive the brass section that hasn’t quite mastered the key change.

Leaving without a Handmade Bee

By 3 p.m. the siesta shutters clatter down and the only movement is a elderly man walking his hunting dog along the dry riverbed. The bakery has sold out of honey biscuits, the museum keeper is having her own siesta in the office chair, and the cliff above the caves glows ochre in the lowering sun. Bicorp doesn’t do farewells; it simply returns to its default setting of warm air, distant bells and the faint sweetness of rosemary drifting downhill. Turn the car onto the CV-566, and within five minutes the village has vanished behind a bend, as if the mountains have closed their notebook on another curious traveller.