Banyeres de Mariola

The thermometer drops eight degrees between Alicante airport and Banyeres de Mariola. One minute you're peeling off layers on the coast, the next you're reaching for a fleece as the car climbs through rosemary-scented air to 816 metres. This isn't one of those whitewashed hill towns that exist purely for photographs – it's a working Valencian village where the butchers know everyone's name and the castle walls still echo with gunpowder every April.

A Town That Breathes in Two Directions

Banyeres sits where the Sierra de Mariola natural park spills almost into the high street. Walk ten minutes from the bakery on Carrer Major and you're under Aleppo pines, following a dry stone track that leads to medieval snow wells and distilleries that once turned mountain herbs into medicine. The town's relationship with the peaks above it isn't decorative – locals still forage for sage and thyme, and the pharmacy sells herbero, a thyme-scented liqueur that's been made here since Moorish times.

The old town tumbles down a slope so steep that delivery vans have scraped their bumpers on the same corners for decades. Houses are built from the mountain itself – honey-coloured limestone that turns amber at sunset. Streets are barely two metres wide in places, designed for donkeys not hatchbacks, which explains why most visitors sensibly abandon their cars on the ring road and walk.

At the top, the thirteenth-century castle keeps watch over four provinces. It's a twenty-minute haul from the main square, past the neoclassical town hall where someone has always just finished a cigarette and is heading inside with folders under their arm. Inside the castle walls, the small archaeological museum displays Iberian bronze belt buckles and a Moorish grinding stone – proof that people have been climbing this hill for reasons other than the view for three thousand years.

When the Mountains Get Under Your Skin

The serious walking starts where the asphalt ends. The path to Font de Mariola spring is three kilometres of steady climb through holm oak and kermes oak, emerging onto a clearing where ice-cold water spills from a pipe into a stone trough. Locals fill plastic bottles here – they claim it cures everything from hangovers to high blood pressure. The full Mariola ridge walk takes six hours and requires proper boots, but shorter loops drop you back in the plaza in time for lunch.

Winter transforms the relationship entirely. At 860 metres, Banyeres gets proper frost – sometimes snow – while Benidorm basks below. The mountains become a different proposition: clear, sharp days when you can see the Mediterranean glinting 40 kilometres away, followed by nights when the temperature plummets to minus five. Summer walks demand a dawn start; by eleven the limestone reflects heat like a pizza oven and the only shade is inside the castle's Islamic foundations.

The Via Verde del Serpis offers flatter relief – a converted railway line that threads through tunnels and across viaducts towards Alcoy. You can hire bikes at the old station in nearby Cocentaina, but you'll need to arrange transport back unless you're prepared for a 25-kilometre uphill slog against the gradient that once defeated steam engines.

Rice, Rabbits and the Scent of Thyme

Mountain cooking here means game when it's in season, rice baked with chickpeas and black pudding when it's not. At Pinar Gastronomic, the chef serves arroz al horno in individual clay pots, the rice crusted and caramelised around the edges exactly as your Spanish neighbour's grandmother would insist upon. The tasting menu comes with explanations in English, but the wine list doesn't pander – it's all local, mostly from vineyards you've never heard of at 700 metres.

L'Almàciga does what Spanish mountain grills have always done best: rabbit with garlic, pork ribs that taste of acorns, chips cut thick enough to soak up the juices. They'll happily produce a plate of plain grilled chicken for children who haven't yet learned that food comes with ears and feet attached. Wednesday's market fills the main square with stalls selling mountain honey so thick you need a proper spoon, and goat's cheese that tastes of the thyme the animals browsed on.

The local bakery's coca de Banyeres is essentially almond sponge topped with pine nuts – less cloying than a Bakewell tart, designed for dipping into morning coffee. Buy it early; by eleven they're onto the second batch and the almond cream hasn't quite set properly.

Gunpowder and Geraniums: Living with the Fiesta

Visit during the Moros y Cristianos festival in late April and you'll understand why half the houses have wooden shutters peppered with tiny holes. The celebrations commemorate thirteenth-century battles with enough gunpowder to make a Hampshire bonfire night look restrained. Parades start at six in the morning with marching bands and don't finish until the castle cannons fire at midnight. Accommodation books out a year in advance; if you're staying in the old town, bring earplugs and accept that sleep is optional.

August's San Roque fiesta is more neighbourhood – street dinners where entire families eat paella from shared plates, children still awake at two in the morning because nobody's told them Spanish bedtime rules are different. The Feria del Herbero in early May is gentler: stalls selling mountain herbs, demonstrations of how to distill herbero, elderly women explaining which plants cure which ailments with the authority of qualified doctors.

The rest of the year, Banyeres settles into itself. Old men play dominoes under the plane trees in Plaça de la Constitució. Women water geraniums that spill from balconies painted the exact blue of a Mediterranean you can't actually see from here. Teenagers practice skateboard tricks outside the modern sports centre, because even medieval towns need somewhere to learn kickflips.

Getting There, Getting It Right

The drive from Alicante takes 75 minutes if you ignore the satnav's optimistic suggestion that you can do the final mountain stretch in twenty. The CV-70 after Alcoy is properly twisty – not scary, but you'll be second-guessing that extra-large rental car by the third hairpin. Buses run three times daily from Alicante, four times on weekdays, but the Sunday service shrinks to one bus each way. Miss it and you're spending the night, which might be the best thing that happens all trip.

Monday sees half the town closed – the castle museum definitely, several restaurants probably. The castle itself stays open but you'll be peering through locked iron gates at Roman coins with only Spanish labels for company. Midday in July is nobody's friend here; even the lizards seek shade as the limestone radiates heat back at you. Plan castle visits for early morning or that golden hour before dinner when the stone glows and the views stretch clear to the coast.

Stay two days minimum. One for the town – castle, church, getting lost in streets that all look identical until you realise they slope upwards – and one for the mountain. The serious hikers will tell you that's barely enough, but it's sufficient to understand why people choose to live at 816 metres where winter bites and summer burns, and why they wouldn't swap it for all the sea views on the Costa Blanca.