Ondara

The Wednesday morning market starts at eight sharp, when stallholders on Avenida de Alicante unfurl tarpaulins heavy with navel oranges still carrying their leaves. By half past nine, British number plates begin appearing in the free car park behind Portal de la Marina—day-trippers who've driven inland for groceries and stumble across the real town by accident. That's Ondara in microcosm: a working agricultural centre wearing a neon shopping-centre sleeve.

Between the Grove and the Carriageway

Ondara sits six kilometres from the sea as the crow flies, but the crow would have to clear a belt of motorway, retail parks and a six-screen cinema first. At barely 30 metres above sea level, the place feels more coastal plain than mountain village, yet the limestone wall of the Montgó keeps watch to the east and citrus terraces roll north towards the almond country of La Sella. The altitude is just enough to lift the air a degree cooler than Denia's beachfront—welcome in July when the coast feels like a hairdryer set to high.

The town's 7,000 inhabitants live in two overlapping worlds. One is the grid of 19th-century streets around the ochre church tower, where elderly men still discuss irrigation rotas in Valencian and the bakery opens at six so field hands can buy still-warm cocas before work. The other is the concrete halo of the A-7 junction, where coach parties spill out for Primark and Zara, and the food court does a roaring trade in frozen yoghurt. Both economies tick along; neither apologises for the other.

What the Coach Parties Miss

Walk five minutes south from the mall's multi-storey and the traffic thins, replaced by the smell of orange sap and wet earth. The 17th-century Iglesia de San Pedro rises abruptly, its bell-tower tiled in bottle-green and white—handy for regaining bearings after the narrow lanes spin you round. Inside, the nave is refreshingly plain: no gold leaf theatrics, just honey-coloured stone and a 1760 organ that gets an airing during the June fiestas. Look up and you'll spot British craftsmen's initials chiselled into roof beams shipped over after the War of Spanish Succession; local archives record payment in muscatel wine.

The old town takes all of forty minutes to cross, but rewards dawdlers. Iron balconies sag with geraniums, their paint blistered by fifty summers. On Carrer Major, number 26 keeps a stone plaque showing a 1902 tariff: rooms at the posada cost one peseta, mule stabling extra. Peer through the grille of the Moorish-style bullring—built in 1945 when someone returned from Seville with a sketchbook—and you realise the arena is smaller than most Surrey village cricket grounds. Bullfights are rare now; Saturday morning padel tournaments draw bigger crowds.

Out in the groves, the legacy irrigation channels still divide plots by the medieval tahúlla measure. Public footpaths skirt the fields, flat enough for pushchairs and signposted only with faded paint slashes on concrete posts. Between February and April the blossom drifts like snow; walk then and you'll understand why the town's winter fiesta crowns a Reina de las Flores rather than a beauty queen. Bring a bag and you can buy windfall fruit from honesty stalls—€2 a kilo, coins dropped into a baked-bean tin.

Lunch When the Supermarket Queue Wins

Market day food is simple and quick. At Bar Central they serve bocadillos de calamares before eleven, the squid rings still crackling from oil that smells of the nearby groves rather than the sea. El Mollete on the main drag does a three-course menú del día for €11, wine included; expect proper home-made croquetas and a pudding that tastes of someone’s grandmother. If the children mutiny, the shopping-centre food court offers roast chicken that could pass for a tame Nando’s and, mysteriously, a Yorkshire pudding stall—proof that British migration leaves culinary footprints.

Serious shoppers save appetite for the market itself. Look for the woman with the blue awning opposite the church: she sells honey from hives placed among the orange blossoms, the jars cloudy with pollen. The cheese counter two stalls along stocks truffle-flecked goat’s cheese from neighbouring Pego; it travels well wrapped in a tea towel for the suitcase home.

When to Come, When to Dodge

Ondara makes a practical base if you want Denia's beaches without Denia prices. Spring and late autumn are kindest: temperatures sit in the low twenties, blossom or harvest scents hang in the air, and Wednesday parking is merely awkward rather than impossible. July and August turn the avenues into a giant barbecue pit; locals close shutters at noon and reappear after seven. Winter is mild—T-shirt weather at midday—but occasional gales whip across the plain and can fell entire rows of citrus. Check the forecast if you're self-catering: power cuts follow high winds and the town's generators prioritise the mall over the suburbs.

Fiestas rearrange normal life. Fallas in mid-March means fireworks at two in the afternoon and streets barricaded with papier-maché monuments that will burn on the final night. Book accommodation early; even the out-of-town caravan sites fill with Valencian families. Late June honours the patron saint with processions that halt traffic for hours and a foam party in the bullring—great for teenagers, less so for anyone seeking rural authenticity. Come instead for Sant Antoni in January: locals lead geese and golden retrievers to the church for blessing, and the priest hands out small bags of holy-herb sweets that taste of aniseed and chalk.

The Exit Ramp Test

Drive out on the old CV-725 towards Pedreguer at sunset and Ondara reveals its split personality. To the left, neon logos flicker above the roofs; to the right, irrigation water glints between dark trees and the evening star hangs over Montgó. The view lasts twenty seconds before the road dips into lemon plantations and the shopping centre disappears from the mirror.

Most British visitors will still treat the town as a convenient pit-stop—luggage in boot, sat-nav set for coastal villas. That's fine; the supermarket car park is big enough and the cinema shows films in English. Just don't leave without walking as far as the church square. Someone there will be sweeping blossom off the stones, filling the evening air with the scent that explains why people stayed here long before retail parks were invented.