Sparkling emerald seas, kilometres of golden sand, mysterious islands, wonderful food, ancient cities…it’s not hard to find convincing reasons to travel along the Mediterranean! And what better way to do it then by bike along the roughly 5,900 km long Mediterranean Route? Admire for instance Granada’s Alhambra or Gaudi’s mind blowing architecture in Barcelona, feel the romance of Venice’s canals and Dubrovnik’s old town or pull your bike up alongside an inviting beach and just relax.
EuroVelo 8 connects many destinations that are popular tourist attractions in their own right: Barcelona, Monaco, Venice, the Croatian Coast, Cyprus – the list goes on. It is little surprise therefore that the Mediterranean Route receives more interest than any other EuroVelo route. And whilst many of it’s destinations are already internationally famous, there are still lots of undiscovered gems to be found along the way, not least in Albania and Montenegro.
And now the Province of Alicante is about to be added to the route. The announcement was made by the Director General of Public Works, Transport and Mobility, Carlos Domingo, who said that stage nine will link Elx and Santa Pola, San Fulgencio, Guardamar del Segura, Rojales, Formentera del Segura, Benijófar, Almoradí, Algorfa, Benejúzar, Jacarilla and Orihuela.
Domingo said that it provides “an opportunity for the municipalities to focus on a different sort of tourism that will make a refreshing addition in this part of the country, and where cyclists can be offered more than 10,000 hotel beds in an area that will provide a “representative sample of the diverse cultural landscape of the Valencian Community”
He spoke of the many places of interest through which the route will travel in the province of Alicante such as the Solana of Benicadell, the lagoon of Gaianes, the natural parks of the Serra de Mariola, the salt flats of Santa Pola and the Font Roja, as well as the dunes of Guardamar and the historic centre of Orihuela.
In the Comunitat Valenciana, the route that has been agreed with the different administrations and that has now been sent to Eurovelo experts for analysis, will cover more than 500 kilometres and will cross 78 municipalities, some declared of Historical interest, as well as four natural parks that already provide an important attraction to 2.4 million inhabitants before the inclusion of tourists and visitors.
Eurovelo aims to form a single transnational cyclist network in Europe. Currently, it already has more than 45,000 kilometres of road and track throughout Europe and, once completed, it will exceed 70,000 km in length.
The route that runs through the Comunitat Valenciana is the EV8-Route which is about 6,000 kilometres long and crosses 11 countries of the Mediterranean basin and its various regions.
