Moraira U3A had a wonderful day out to Bocairent on Thursday 19th September. We met at la Senieta at 8am and boarded our coach for our day’s adventures. We went towards Valencia and on to Ontinyent and then climbed up the mountain to Bocairent. Our guide Christina was with us on the coach and pointed out sights of significance like the rock pools on the mountains of the Mariola Sierras and gave us a historical back ground from centuries ago to base our visit upon.
We arrived in Bocairent and disembarked the coach. We met our local guide Jose and as Bocairent is a hill town and we were a large party we just took our time and walked up the little streets. Jose was well informed and gave us great details about a big earthquake in the 1700’s and how some of the town could not be rebuilt. The little houses look like they are clinging to a cliff in some places.We continued up the hill towards the oldest Bullring in the province of Valencia. It is excavated from the mountain rock and although it is quite small it is still used today
Jose took us around the town with some lovely viewpoints and told us a lot about it’s interesting history such at the door called the excuse door. Eventually we approached the church which was closed to the public but we were able to visit it privately.
The church holds the the world-renowned religious masterpiece painting by Joaquín Sorolla, which we were allowed to see. It was incredible inside the church, little chapels richly decorated with gold and wonderful coloured frescoes.
After being at the church at leisure Jose took us to the Muslim medieval areas of the town and described all manner of historical buildings, architecture and reasons for their existence.
We then approached the Mercacentro Gourmet, shop where we were able to taste local wines and foods. Interesting little toasts topped with local produce, and sampled glasses of vermouth and herbal drinks. There were lots of items in the shop to buy at incredible prices. After our visit to the market we went to the El Cancell restaurant where we had lunch and then we resumed our adventures to visit a winery called Los Pinos.
At the winery we were met by Juan who took us for a walk up to the vineyards and pointed out various varieties of grapes and explained in detail the way that they produced their wines from the particular grapes that they grew.
He outlined the season of growing and took time to tell us the vineyard was an ecological growing area. We then went into the winemaking area, and we were then shown into a beautiful courtyard of the winery where we were able to taste a white, rose and red wine which Juan explained the finer details of. We finished the winery tour and each of us was given the gift of a bottle of the red wine that had been produced.
We made our way back to the coach where Pepe was waiting for us and managed to dodge the raindrops. All aboard and off we started to return to Moraira which was a 2 hour journey and we arrived back at 8 pm.
Thank you very much to Carole and Paul Clerk for their work in organising this trip/