Sueca

Three metres above sea level and barely 35 km south of Valencia, Sueca keeps the Mediterranean at arm’s length. The town itself sits inland, buffered by a chequer-board of rice paddies that flood in April and shine like polished steel until early summer. When the wind blows from the south-east the salt smell still reaches the church square, but the beach is a ten-minute drive away – close enough for an after-work swim, far enough for the streets to stay free of inflatables and English breakfast posters.

The Paddle-Steamer and the Parish

The C-1 Cercanías train deposits visitors at a single-platform station whose 1920s ticket office still has the original brass clock. From here it is a flat 800 m walk to the centre, past wholesalers selling sickles and rubber boots, past bakeries advertising fartons at 80 cents apiece. The church of Sant Pere Apòstol rises abruptly at the end of Carrer Major; its tower lost a pinnacle in the 1748 earthquake and nobody ever bothered to replace it, giving the skyline a lopsided grin. Step inside and the air smells of candle wax and rice husk – farmers still leave a sack at the altar each harvest in thanks for the absence of salt-water intrusion.

Opposite the church, the Museu de l’Arròs occupies a former rice mill built for the 1901 harvest. The original Siemens engine stands in the courtyard, painted the same green as London’s District line. Inside, a single room traces the grain’s journey from Valencia’s Moorish period to the present; labels are Valencian-first, English-second, but the photographs speak for themselves – teams of women in head-scarves bent double planting shoots, the same scene you can watch today from any cycle path in May.

Water, Mud and Bikes

The tourist office (open 10–14.00, closed Sunday afternoon) lends out free trail maps, but the logic is simple: pick any track heading east and you will hit water within half an hour. In late spring the paddies are mirrors; herons stand motionless like white punctuation marks. The terrain is pancake-flat, but the picnic-perfect moment comes early – by 11 a.m. the sun is already high enough to bounce off the water and fry the back of your neck. Bring factor 30 and a bottle that fits in the bike cage; there are no shops between town and the lagoon.

L’Albufera Natural Park begins where the last rice field ends. A dirt causeway separates freshwater from salt, and suddenly the horizon widens into a pale sheet that could be the Norfolk Broads on a bigger scale. Small boats – albuferencs – tie up beside a corrugated-iron bar serving canned beer and alls i pebre of eel. Brits expecting a dainty tasting portion are startled: the stew arrives in a cereal bowl, thick with potato and enough garlic to stun a vampire. One portion feeds two; ask for “mitja ració” if you are cycling afterwards.

The Two Beaches

Most visitors peel off to the coast before lunch. The road signs read “Mareny”, not “playa”, a linguistic clue that you are entering a separate micro-village where houses have boat ramps instead of drives. Platja de les Palmeres is the first stop: five kilometres of caramel-coloured sand backed by dunes and a single row of 1950s villas. The chiringuito rents sun-loungers for €4 a day and plays Radio 3 at conversation volume; there are no banana boats, no karaoke. A kilometre farther south, Platja del Mareny Blau is wilder – no services, just a dirt car park and a sign warning of rip currents when the wind blows from the east. On weekdays you can walk half an hour and meet only a lone fisherman cutting squid for bait.

Swimmers used to the Costa Blanca will notice the water is cloudier; the rice silts colour it café-au-lait for the first twenty metres. The compensation is warmth – shallow flats heat up like a bath in July – and space. Even in August, when Valencians descend at weekends, you can still lay a towel without touching your neighbour’s.

Rice with Everything

Sueca’s restaurants assume you have come to eat arroz in some form. The midday menú del día costs €12–14 and includes wine, but the choice is usually binary: meat-based arròs al forn or fishy arròs a banda. Vegetarians are tolerated rather than embraced; one restaurateur offered a Brit “arròs amb cols” (rice with cabbage) last summer and seemed hurt when asked for something without jamón stock. Puddings are reassuringly predictable: crema catalana or fartons dipped in horchata, the tiger-nut milk that tastes like liquid marzipan.

Serious foodies book for Sunday lunch, when extended families occupy tables for three-hour sieges and the paella pan arrives wider than a bicycle wheel. Casa Salvador (Carrer d’Albalat, 15) has no sea view and no website, but it wins the local concurs de paella most years. Order the duck-and-snail version and you will be asked to confirm the number of diners – rice is cooked to ratio, no extra portions. Arrive at 14.00 sharp; the chef starts toasting the saffron at 13.45 and refuses to re-light the burner for stragglers.

When the Calendar Dictates

Timing matters. Late May brings the Festes de la Plantà, when tractors parade through town draped in palm fronds and girls in regional dress throw rice sweets at onlookers. The night finishes with fireworks that rattle the greenhouse roofs; accommodation doubles in price for the weekend but you can still find a double room for €60 if you stay in the historic centre rather than the coast.

August is the flip side: temperatures brush 35 °C by 11 a.m. and many bars close the last fortnight while owners flee to the mountains. The beach car parks become free-for-alls and the smell of warm seaweed drifts across the sand. October, after the harvest, is kinder – warm enough to lunch outside, cool enough for a cycle without resembling a sweat lodge. Winter is quiet: hotels drop to €35 a night but the wetlands turn moody under grey skies and the rice fields look like stubbled fields outside Cambridge.

Getting Here, Getting Out

Valencia airport to Sueca is painless: metro to Xàtiva, regional train to town, total journey 75 minutes and €6. A hire car adds flexibility for the coast but is a liability in the historic centre – streets are single-track and the blue-zone police patrol with enthusiasm. If you base yourself in town you can reach the sea by local bus (€1.50, hourly except Sunday afternoon) or taxi (€12 fixed fare). British voices are rare enough that bar staff will ask “de dónde eres?” and mean it.

Leave space in the suitcase. The cooperative on Avinguda d’Alacant sells five-kilo sacks of bomba rice for €8, vacuum-packed so they won’t leak in the hold. Add a bottle of local mistela dessert wine and you have the makings of a dinner-party anecdote that starts, “We bought this in a town most people only see from the train…”

Sueca will never make the glossy brochures – it has neither the drama of the Alpujarras nor the polish of Valencia’s old town. What it offers instead is a working calendar of soil, water and plate, ticking over three metres above sea level while the Mediterranean glitters on the horizon. Turn up with time to spare and the town slows the clock just enough to remember what day of the week it is.