The Costa Blanca is supposed to get the est winter weather, so with holiday to kill we decided on a last minuet bargain holiday to Benidorm. Our flight into Alicante Airport (Dump) should have warned us the whole arrangement was going to be different to the laid back splendour of Mallorca. Once the cattle market of the airport was dealt with we went to collect our hire car (crap) from a man with a white van in a multi story car park; Citroen Saxo's are not good cars.
We arrived at our Hotel to find that we had been stitched up. Panic. A phone call to an emergency hotline sent us speeding across Benidorm to a self catering apartment which was OK except for being woken by the early morning fat wobbling aerobics class next door. After settling in taking in the local sights of Bingo halls and strip joints (staring Sticky Vikki) and a sumptuous fish and chip supper we where ready to climb.
We dithered over the first route but finally selected The Green Route 2 (5, 4+). The guide book didn't mention that wires where needed for the route but the bolts didn't look good so we stuck the wires in to protect the hard first few moves. We had planned to do alternate leads but the plan changed when we saw the second pitch, it was going to be another "stiff" one. We where right, it was all big pulls and undercuts on a series of flakes. Once done and down on terra firma via a full rope length abseil we decided that The Green Route 3 (6a, 6a) would be next. The bolts were really crap so we decided to call it a day with about 2/3 of the route done.
Next day we descended on Stella which had a mixed bag of single pitch climbs of suitable grades and rounded this off with a tour of the Benidorm night life - Strange.
Reconco is a long way from Benidorm but well worth the journey. It's brilliant! Loads of high quality well bolted slabby routes which we climbed until it was far too dark.
The next day we went to Salem and managed to get up a very damp route "Xeroki" before the heavens opened in a spectacular way. All we could do was wait until the weather cleared. By late afternoon it was dry enough to tackle some climbing at Toix, so we scaled The Red Route 2 (5, 4+) to round off the holidays climbing before being drawn back to the culinary delights of Benidorm old town.
Martin "Better Late than never" Upfold