Denia, the harbour town in the province of Alicante

Lying just north of Javea, this is where you pick up your high-speed catamaran ferry for a night of rock’n’roll in Ibiza or, if you fancy a more leisurely ride, you can take a panoramic trip down the coast as far as Altea.

Denia is also a large holiday resort being, along with Javea, the place where wealthy folk from Valencia had their summer homes. It is more Spanish than either of the two southern resorts and has suffered less from property development, at least immediately around the town, although this is set for a big change.

Nestling at the foot of the Montgó, the name of the mountain and national park, Denia has twenty kilometres of beaches, ranging from soft and sandy to the north to rough and rugged in the south. Les Deveses is popular with windsurfers, while for those who prefer life under the waves there are plenty of rocky coves south of the Port at Marineta Cassiana, El Trampoli and Punta Negra.

Most tourist offices provide way-marked walks, but Denia must be the only resort in the Costa Blanca that provides way-marked dives – two of them in the Cap de San-Antonio Marine Reserve. If you fancy a bit of skinny-dipping, the tiny La Cala cove next to the Reserve is the place for an all-over tan.

Denia’s biggest tourist draw is the Castillo, situated in the heart of the town. The original design can be traced back to the Islamic era (11th-12th centuries) with additions in most centuries up to the 17th. In the narrow streets descending to the modern town the houses are built onto the castle walls themselves. Take away the satellite dishes and you can vaguely imagine life long ago.

The tree-lined Carrer Marques de Campo that leads up from the port is the main shopping street of the town, although Denia has no shortage of places to shop or dine. The prawns here are said to be the best in the world (although no-one knows who actually said it!) and to sample them you could try one of the fish restaurants that overlook the beach at Punta Raset, a ten-minute walk north from the Port.

Like most tourist towns Denia has it’s fair share of museums, but one worth a quick look is the newly opened toy museum. Before the disastrous phylloxera epidemic in 1904 that destroyed millions of vines throughout Europe, Denia’s main money-earner had been the exportation of raisins. (The Co-operative Wholesale Society even had its own warehouse in the town from where it despatched raisins to the ports of Liverpool and London.) When the town appeared to be on the edge of bankruptcy after the infestation two enterprising German brothers called Ferchen, exporters of dried fruits, began to bring lithographed sheets of tin-plate from Germany to be made into tin toys in Denia. They were the saviours of the town and Denia became one of the most important toy producers in Spain. On display are examples of toys produced there, with plenty of the ‘I had one of those’ to bring a smile to the lips of those of a certain age.

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