Calpe uncovered

Calpe

The northernCosta Blanca has the reputation for being peaceful and unspoilt, with the towns of Moraira, Javea and Denia the main centres for holiday villas. But the gateway to the area is Calpe, a thriving commercial centre and resort in its own right, says Eve Kerswill

When you first drive into Calpe it seems like a mini Benidorm – busy, bustling and in the midst of a high-rise building boom. But if you look at it from a different perspective, say from near the top of Oltá, the wide-topped mountain that stretches up behind the town, the view is more reassuring.

Below you extends a pleasant and surprisingly green landscape – and of the 20 or so miles of distant coastline, only a small fraction is fringed by Calpe’s apartment blocks.

Before you are rolling hills, some dotted with villas amongst trees, some completely wooded and others laid to vineyards. Olive groves and orange and lemon trees stretch towards the sea.

The coastline to the north looks reassuringly pine fringed and unspoilt. There are homes hidden amongst the trees – and yes, more are being built – but for the moment they hardly show.

Calpe itself takes up only a small space on the canvas: a huddled old town on the hill, surrounded by newer residential apartments and houses, and, stretching down towards the sea, a busy town centre full of shops, offices, restaurants and more apartments. Most of the holiday apartments line beaches spreading out on either side of the massive and famous Peñon de Ifach, or Calpe Rock, which dwarfs them. Holiday villas and local detached homes tend to be nearer the hills or along the cliffs towards the edge of town.

Amazingly, right on the sea front, there is a scattering of villas from the 40s and 50s which have survived even the latest frenzied development boom – said to have been brought on by the "black peseta" (many people needed to get rid of Spanish cash stashed ‘under the bed' before the euro made it obsolete).

How much longer these pretty white villas will be there is hard to tell – Spain has few building preservation measures – there’s no National Trust or Heritage charities – and the owners are sitting on sites worth millions.

For all that it has seemingly sold out to property developers, Calpe has ploughed some of its new money into beneficial projects for both its citizens and tourists. First, it built promenades, which provide miles of traffic-free, level walking linking the town with its beaches, harbour and the Peñon. More recently it has constructed a sumptuous Casa de Cultura (arts centre) where there are frequent concerts, and some smart civic buildings.

It has also restored its old town. This hasn’t been given as high a profile as say, neighbouring Altea’s, but it is a pleasant place to explore if you seek it out. There are no upmarket (or indeed any) gift shops, but we discovered an excellent tapas bar and, next to the fishermen's union in the main old town square, an unpretentious restaurant that serves superb paella and arroz negro (literally, black rice – paella with squid ink).

A number of old town buildings bear trompe l'oeil and other murals – there is an arty air to the place. Like other towns in the area, Calpe used to be popular with artists and writers, and to some extent still is. Altea has a thriving artists’ colony and even Benidorm, half an hour down the coast, has literary connections – poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes honeymooned there in 1956 when it was just a fishing village.

There is a handful of newly established museums in the old town town, all free and beautifully fitted out. The Museum of Costume houses fantastically intricate and colourful outfits worn for local festivals like the 'Moors and Christians'. And there's a new Collectors' Museum (featuring Barbie dolls at the time of our visit).

A Museum of Archaeology gives useful background to the town’s Roman sites, although not much is made of these in situ.

In England, the main site would be cared for and actively promoted – with neat walls, landscaping and a ticket booth – but here the predominant Roman site, alongside part of the promenade, is cordoned off by a scruffy wire fence. It’s also the victim of dumping, probably because many a greedy property developer has his eye on the site – it’s as if they want it to look as unsightly as possible so they can ‘smarten’ it up with a ‘nice high rise’.