Piles

The Sunday market kicks off at nine sharp, but the bars are already buzzing by half past eight. Pensioners in flat caps nurse carajillos while market traders unload crates of just-picked navel oranges, the scent so sharp it cuts through the morning coffee. This is Piles at its most animated: a compact grid of whitewashed houses three kilometres inland, where farmers still hose down the streets at dawn and every fourth doorway conceals a bar.

Between the trees and the tide

Five metres above sea level is barely a bump, yet it is enough to lift the village safely clear of winter storms. From the church square it is a 25-minute bike ride to the sea along a dead-flat lane that tunnels through citrus groves. The change in air is immediate: warm, resinous breeze replaces the cool shade of the orchards, and the hum of bees gives way to gulls. Playa de Piles stretches four kilometres—fine, pale sand backed by low dunes and a single line of villas that look half-asleep even in July. No high-rises, no promenade of neon names: just the xiringuito beach bar, a sailing school the size of a garden shed, and a lifeguard tower painted the same municipal green as the village bins.

Swimming is safe and sandy-bottomed, though seaweed drifts in after easterly winds and the council tractors rake it away by eight each morning. Winter visitors often have the place to themselves, but since the town hall enforced a 10-month opening season even January weekends now see a scattering of coats and walking boots along the high-water mark. The tower at the beach’s southern end—Torre de la Playa—has been scrubbed back to honey-coloured stone and makes a handy windbreak when the levante blows.

A bar for every hundred souls

There are roughly 3,000 permanent residents and, depending on which local you ask, between 28 and 32 bars. Nobody can agree on the exact count because front-room taverns open and close with the optimism of a family fiesta. What is certain is that none of them hand you an English menu; most don’t bother with a written menu at all. Order a caña and a plate of something arrives—perhaps boquerones marinated in sharp vinegar, perhaps a slab of tortilla still warm from the kitchen. Pointing works; so does the magic word “medio” if two forks are plenty.

Calle Mayor, the main drag, is barely two cars wide. Park wherever you can squeeze a tyre without blocking a garage door—traffic wardens appear only on market day. By 11 p.m. the street sounds like a wedding party: conversation spilling from Bar Nº 1, children weaving between stools with ice-cream cones, the clatter of dominoes at Bar Nº 3. The lone disco, Pampols, advertises itself as “21 to 90” and means it: British grandparents have been spotted jiving alongside Madrid students at two in the morning.

Oranges, rice and the Friday fish van

The agricultural cooperative on Camí Vell de Oliva will sell you a 10-kilo sack of oranges for six euros in season (December–April). The fruit is unwaxed, so don’t expect supermarket shine; what you get is juice that stains the chin and a scent that lingers in the car all the way to Gatwick. Rice dishes are taken seriously—every household swears by its own paella timing—but the version most visitors taste first arrives from the travelling fish van that honks its horn every Friday noon. Locals dash out with stainless-steel trays; visitors queue for calamari sandwiches eaten leaning against the church wall.

If you prefer a chair, head to the market on Sunday. Stallholders hawk everything from cheap jeans to cast-iron pans, but the real business happens at the pop-up bar in the corner: plastic cups of beer, razor clams a la plancha, and the best people-watching seat in the comarca. Arrive before ten or you will stand—every barstool is claimed by grandparents who treat the market like their living room.

When the fiestas take over

Festivity is measured in gunpowder. The big bang comes on 23 May for Sant Felip Neri: processions start at 10 p.m. from the church, brass bands competing with the pop of firecrackers that children toss under their own feet. Midnight fireworks are set off on wasteland behind the cemetery; bring a cushion and a bottle of cava, and remember the display is closer than British health-and-safety would allow. August adds the festa major—outdoor cinema on the football pitch, paella cooked in a pan three metres wide, and foam parties that turn the plaça into a bubble bath. These are not tourist spectacles; visitors are welcome but not announced, so polite hovering by the beer tent is the quickest way to be handed a plate.

Getting here, getting around

Gandía, six kilometres north, has the nearest main-line station. A twice-daily bus trundles to Piles in 20 minutes; otherwise a taxi costs €12 and drivers rarely expect a tip. Alicante airport is 90 minutes south by hire car; Valencia airport 75 minutes north. The AP-7 motorway skirts the village—close enough for convenience, far enough that you hear cicadas, not lorries. Once here, a bike is gold. The flat lanes radiate like spokes: west to orange groves, east to the sea, south to Oliva’s marshy natural park where herons stand in the rice paddies.

What it isn’t

Piles will not dazzle with Michelin stars, Moorish castles or boutique hotels. Accommodation is largely privately owned apartments rented through Spanish agencies; the smartest block overlooks the dunes and still charges under £90 a night in high summer. Wi-Fi can hiccup when the wind rattles the telephone wires, and shops shut tight from two until five. If you need constant stimulation, Gandía’s neon seafront is 15 minutes away. Come here instead for the small-scale certainties: coffee that costs €1.20 every single time, neighbours who greet the street cleaner by name, and the moment at dusk when the sea turns the same colour as the orange blossom drifting down from the hills.