Deciding for the Costa Blanca
Sun, sea, mountains and the relaxed Spanish lifestyle. The Costa Blanca is ideally situated. On one side, there is a fantastic view of the sea with breathtakingly beautiful beaches. On the other, the mountains, rugged nature and the authentic hinterland. A night sky filled with stars and a valley filled with lights.
Costa Blanca has the best climate in Europe. The WHO, World Health Organisation, even named the Costa Blanca one of the healthiest places to live on the planet! That’s because of the beneficial effect of clean air and the absence of industry. Plus, lots of Vitamin D all year round, with 300 days of sunshine and an average temperature of around twenty degrees!
Add to that the relaxed Spanish lifestyle with little stress and the healthy Mediterranean cuisine and it’s no wonder that the average life expectancy is high here. And it’s a healing living environment for people with respiratory problems, allergies, rheumatoid or osteo arthritis.
Precisely because of the climate, pretty much all outdoor sports are popular here: in and on the sea, on the beach and in the mountains. Swimming, sailing, surfing, kite surfing, paddle boarding, snorkelling and diving. Walking, hiking, cycling or horse-riding in nature. There are tennis and padel courts and you can play a few rounds on one of the many beautiful golf courses. It’s also the ideal climate for doing absolutely nothing.
The spring, when nature awakes, everything blooms and everyone goes out and about again. The almond trees with clouds of white blossom which gave the Costa Blanca its name. Then the convivial commotion of the summer. The autumn, when peace returns, daily life goes back to normal and the sea is still lovely and warm. And of course the festivities at Christmas, celebrated exuberantly with lights, decorations, Christmas trees and markets. Feliz Navidad!
EBS Team favourites
The EBS Team consists of many nationalities. But one thing they have in common is their love of the Costa Blanca.
From this section of the website, we’d like to tell you about our favourites, in the broadest sense of the word: restaurants, beautiful little bays, cycling or hiking routes, views or nice places to shop.
We kick off with Portixol/Cala Clemence and the Coll de Rates, a well-known destination for racing cyclists… Portixol is a combination of hidden beach with beach bar, where you can enjoy the sea and lunch in peace. The Coll de Rates is a wonderful and not too steep climb for racing cyclists, which appears in 90% of professionals’ training programmes!
Portixol is one of those little bays the Costa Blanca is praised for. In this case, a pebble beach, but many locals sunbathe there in the summer. To make being in such a beautiful bay even better, there are often beach bars -chiringuitos – where you can relax with a drink and delicious food.
In Portixol, that’s Cala Clemence Beach Club, situated in a lovely spot, high above the water. Nice view of the sea and part of the rugged coastline, where large and small boats pass and anchor for a swim.
There is a danger here, at weekends, of the late lunch (from 16:00 to 18:00 in Spain) developing into a dance party led by DJ Very Ferry or DJ Laurant… at which point the peace is over.
Racing cycling and the Costa Blanca are inextricably entwined. Every year, a great many racing cyclists, both amateur and professional, come especially to this region to chalk up kilometres where the E.B.S. Team also cycles its local rides. That’s great, certainly for Dutch cyclists, though it takes some getting used to: you often hear newcomers say: ‘There’s not a single metre of flat’.
The gently sloping roads between Dénia and Altea alternate with longer climbs and mountains. The summits vary from 300 to 1200 metres; admittedly no Alps or Pyrenees, but taken from sea level, climbs of up to 15 kilometres long.
One of the best known is the Coll de Rates, a climb of 6 kilometres with an average of 5% elevation. So quite friendly. At the top, your reward awaits you in the form of an unexpected lunch place that serves “apfelstrüdel” in the best mountain tradition. But if you don’t want to stop at the summit, there are Parcent, Alcalali or Jalon before or after the climb.
