Tibi

The Dam That Changed a Mountainside

Philip II ordered it built when Shakespeare was still alive. Four-hundred-and-something years later the Pantano de Tibi still holds back the same ravine, its masonry streaked white by winter rains and its outlet pipes grumbling like an old boiler whenever the level drops. Most visitors reach the reservoir wall long before they reach the village: the road from Castalla climbs through almond terraces, then suddenly the valley opens and the stone face appears, 32 m high and curved like a ship’s prow. Pull in at the Mesón Maigmó lay-by; the only information board is sun-bleached to near illegibility, but the view needs no caption.

Access is trickier than the photographs suggest. The left-bank track is chained off more often than not – irrigation authority rules, not municipal – so the simplest walk is the circular route that starts from the restaurant car park. The first kilometre is level, skirting olive groves and the remains of an ice house. After that the path narrows, the drop steepens and the dam becomes a backdrop rather than a destination. Allow ninety minutes and carry more water than you think sensible; even in April the sun rebounds off the water.

A Village That Keeps Bankers’ Hours

Tibi proper sits three kilometres upstream, folded into a saddle at 533 m. Stone houses are staggered up the slope so every roof terrace catches a wedge of Mediterranean sky. Population swells to maybe 1,900 on fiesta days, shrinks again when the olive harvest ends. There is no bank, no cash machine, no Sunday supermarket. The single grocery locks its metal shutters at 14:00 and reopens only if the owner feels like it after siesta. Fill the tank and your wallet in Alicante before you leave the A-31.

What the place does have is acoustics. Church bells still mark the quarters, amplified by the narrow streets. At 08:00 the scrap-metal lorry cruises the lanes, its loudspeaker crackling “Se compra plancha, se compra frigorífico” – the same recording villagers have heard since the Nineties. By 22:00 the only sound is the odd dog and the hum of the oil mill when the night shift starts. British visitors sometimes complain the village is “too quiet”; others admit they slept ten hours straight for the first time in years.

Trails That Start at the Edge of Town

Walk to the upper cemetery and you are already on the old mule track to Castalla. Carry on another hour and you reach the fire-watch tower on Pic de Tibi (1,026 m). The climb is steady rather than dramatic, but the summit clears the coastal haze: on clear winter days you can pick out the container ships stacking up outside Valencia port. Mountain bikers use the same web of forestry roads; download the Maigmó–Tibi GPX before you set off – phone coverage vanishes in the pine folds.

Spring brings the best walking window. Almond blossom appears in late February, followed by a brief, almost English-green phase when poppies colonise the fallow terraces. By late May the ground is baked iron-hard and the cicadas are deafening. Summer hikers start at dawn and aim to be back in the plaza before the thermometer crosses 30 °C. Autumn smells of distilling rosemary and freshly-pressed olives; the cooperativa sells new oil in two-litre plastic bottles that leak if you pack them sideways in hold luggage.

Food Meant for Field Workers

Menus are short and heavy on pulses. Arroz al horno arrives in individual clay pots, the rice crusted against the sides like the Spanish cousin of a Lancashire hot-pot. Olleta is essentially a ham-hock broth bulked out with butter beans and anything the garden produced yesterday. Portions are calibrated for people who have just walked off a mountainside; order a “media ración” unless you are seriously hungry.

The Quesería del Valle de Tibi, opposite the church, makes a mild goat’s cheese that even toddlers approve of. They will vacuum-seal a half-round so it survives the flight home in hand luggage. Local honey is thick, almost opaque, with a flavour that shifts from rosemary in April to thyme in June. Neither product breaks UK customs rules, and both cost half what they fetch at Borough Market.

When the Calendar Takes Over

Fiestas are not staged for tour groups. The mid-August programme honours the Transfiguration with massed brass bands that rehearse in the street because nowhere owns a rehearsal room. Processions leave the church at an arthritic pace, then sprint the last hundred metres when the drummer decides it is time for lunch. Visitors are welcome to fall in behind – just remember men remove hats, women do not need head-covering.

Sant Vicent Ferrer in April is quieter: a single marquee in the plaza, paella for the entire village, and a sermon broadcast over speakers that distort every sibilant. If you prefer your traditions edible, come during the November olive weekends when the mill stays open late and someone’s uncle brings a portable grill for fresh “longaniza” sausages. Entrance is free; you pay by buying a bottle of oil you probably did not intend to carry.

Getting There, Getting Out

Alicante airport to Tibi takes 55 minutes by car: A-31 towards Madrid, exit 67 for Castalla, then CV-810 into the mountains. The last twelve kilometres coil through pine woods; meet a lorry on a hairpin and you will discover how good your hire-car insurance really is. In high summer the asphalt shimmers; after heavy rain in October the same road can be littered with fallen limestone. Winter tyres are not obligatory, but common sense is.

Public transport exists in theory: two Alsa buses a day from Alicante, both timed to suit school runs rather than flights. Miss the 16:30 and you are spending the night in the city. Most British visitors hire a car anyway – the same vehicle lets you continue north to the wine country around Villena or drop down to the coast for a swim when the reservoir starts to feel like a mirage.

Leave before sunrise on your final day and you might catch the dam release: a sudden rush of white water that drowns out the cicadas and sends herons flapping downstream. No souvenir shop sells a postcard of that moment, which is precisely why you came.