La Pobla del Duc

The tractor driver waves you through the narrow CV-611, then swings left into a lane of orange trees so glossy they look varnished. You are still twenty metres above sea level—low enough for citrus, too low for the almond terraces that start at 400 m—but the road behind has already corkscrewed enough to make the morning mist linger. This is La Pobla del Duc, a grid of whitewashed walls and green shutters wedged between the last folds of the Vall d'Albaida and the coastal plain. No one nestles here; the village simply stops where the irrigation channels run out.

The Plaza at Ten Past Nine

By 09:10 the bakery on Carrer Major has sold out of coca de mida, the thin onion-and-tuna slab that locals eat like a sandwich. The metal shutters roll down with a clatter; trade is finished for the day. Opposite, three teenagers sprawl on the stone lip of the Renaissance fountain, scrolling phones in one hand, cigarettes in the other. The fountain still carries drinking water—look for the brass spout labelled "potable"—and its trough is deep enough to bathe a dog, though the town hall politely asks you not to.

The church bell strikes the half hour. Everything pauses: the woman sweeping her threshold, the courier van idling outside the cooperative, even the dogs. San Pedro Apóstol’s neoclassical façade is more interesting inside than out: a 1790 retablo painted ox-blood red, a side chapel dedicated to Sant Blai (patron of throats) and, tucked behind the organ, a tiny museum containing a 1479 missal whose margins are graffitied by bored choirboys. Entry is free, but the door stays locked unless the sacristan is around; his house is the one with the green Vespa permanently parked across the pavement.

Oranges, Oil and a Whiff of Sulphur

Leave the plaza by the eastern arch and you walk straight into the irrigation grid. Water runs in narrow ditches between plots, controlled by cast-iron wheels that groan like old pub doors. January to March is picking season: crates of navelina oranges are stacked three-high beside the road, waiting for a lorry that always arrives just after you’ve given up looking. The cooperative press, a low concrete shed painted the colour of nicotine, bottles oil on Tuesdays. Turn up at 11:00 with an empty 500 ml glass and they’ll fill it for €4, still cloudy with sediment. The smell is sharp, almost chemical—good oil should make the back of your throat itch.

If you want to see how the place functioned before electricity, follow the signed route to the three public washing troughs. The largest, Font de Baix, sits under a plane tree whose roots have lifted the flagstones into a trip hazard. Women still scrub tablecloths here on Sunday mornings; photographs are tolerated, offered soap is not.

Civil War in the Cellar

Ask for the refugi at the town hall and the clerk hands over a brass key the size of a toothbrush. A spiral staircase drops twelve metres into a tunnel hacked out during the winter of 1938. The walls are lined with newspaper headlines—“Avance del Ejército Nacional”—and someone has crayoned a cartoon of Franco that would have earned a bullet if discovered. Forty-five metres of dank corridor end at a metal door that once opened onto the railway cutting; the track was torn up in the 1970s, so you emerge instead into a car park scented wildly of orange blossom. The whole detour takes twelve minutes; the key must be returned by 14:00 or the clerk locks up and goes home for lunch.

Eating Without a Menu

No restaurant here prints an English translation, which keeps the daily set price at €12. Walk into Bar Central at 14:00 sharp and you’ll be squeezed between farmers discussing rainfall in millilitres. Monday’s menu runs to turkey steak with almond sauce—mild, reassuringly beige—followed by baked persimmon and a glass of slightly fizzy red from the barrel. Vegetarians get a roasted piquillo pepper stuffed with cauliflower; vegans are offered the same pepper, empty. Pudding is optional but the coffee is decent, served in thick glass cups that retain heat longer than porcelain. Pay at the counter: cards accepted only if the totals ends in zero.

A Hill that Isn’t a Mountain

The CV-40 south out of town climbs 200 m in four kilometres, then unravels across a plateau of almond and olive. Park at the Mirador de la Penyeta (lay-by for six cars; if it’s full, wait ten minutes and someone will leave). The view east takes in the whole citrus belt: a chessboard of dark green and irrigation silver that ends abruptly at the A-7, beyond which the ground dissolves into haze. On clear winter days you can pick out the spike of Xàtiva castle 18 km away; in July the heat shimmer turns everything to watercolour. Bring a windbreak—altitude is only 540 m but the breeze has a bite once the sun drops.

When Things Close

Market day is Tuesday: one fruit stall, one hardware barrow, a van selling bedspreads. By 13:30 the square is empty again. The bakery shuts Saturday at 14:00 and doesn’t reopen till Monday; the only cash machine is inside the Co-op, charges €2 a pop, and runs out of notes at weekends. Sunday afternoon is siesta in earnest—no bars, no shops, no pharmacy. Plan accordingly: a bottle of water, a packet of biscuits and enough petrol to reach Xàtiva or Ontinyent, both 20 minutes away.

Getting Here, Leaving Again

Valencia airport to La Pobla del Duc is 80 km: take the A-7 south past the rice paddies of Sueca, peel off at exit 508 and follow the CV-40 through orange-scented dusk. Car hire is essential; there is no railway station, and the twice-daily bus from Xàtiva times itself for pensioners, not planes. If you stay overnight—there are two village houses licensed for tourists, both booked solid during orange blossom weekends in April—expect church bells on the quarter hour and the occasional tractor at dawn. Check-out is 10:00 sharp; the cleaning lady has vegetables to pick.