If you like tourist routes, travel various destinations following a path already drawn, you can try the charming Water Route. It is not a path that involves days and days of walking, not at all. It is a fun path that, at most, lasts four hours.
Let's talk about the Chelva Water Route, Valencia.
Chelva Water Route
Valencia It is a part of Spain, founded centuries ago by the Romans on their way through the peninsula. The city rests on the banks of the Turia river but today, in addition to being a city, it is a province and a community. If you go to visit, don't stop walking around its historic center, one of the largest in the country, rich in architectural heritage.
But if nature is also your thing, you can put on comfortable shoes and go for a walk following the Chelva water route, which you can do both from Chelva and from Calles. Is a circular route which also combines culture, so you kill two birds with one stone.
Then, you can start the route in Chelva, in the Plaza Mayor, or in streets, the other end of the path. In any of the cases you will always pass, following the tourist signs, through the Muslim Quarter of Benacacira, the Christian Quarters of Ollerías, Bajada al río, Molino Puerto, La Playeta, Túnel de Olinches, Olinches itself, the river, the Fuente del Cuco, the Mirador, the Fábrica de la Luz, the Arrabal , the Jewish Quarter of Azoque, the Plaza Mayor…
Why is there a water route? well the water It has always been a great treasure in Chelva, y this route unites different sites related to water, which have always been meeting places for the inhabitants of the town: either they gathered to drink water, or to collect it, or they took the animals to drink, or the women did their laundry there, talked and shared gossip and important events, or human devices used the water for mills and irrigation.
Ok, starting the route in Chelva we can walk a bit historic helmet, always following the information panels and signaling signs. Later, those same signs make us descend towards the Tuéjar river, passing before a source and a detour. Next to the bed of the Chelva river, as the Túejar is also called, there is a special area called Molino Puerto recreational area.
Here there are games for children, bathrooms, paelleros and a bar. Many stay here for a while and decide whether to follow the entire route and just venture to the shoreline. It is a way to shorten the tour quite a bit and it is always an option if the weather is not good or you are with little ones that are not very cooperative.
From here, although on the other side of the river, there is a path that shows us the route in the direction of the beach, a place hidden in a narrowing of the river with an old weir of medieval origin. A weir is a wall, something like a dam but much smaller. From here the path begins to climb until it reaches the Olinches Pass, a tunnel excavated in rock that had the function of channeling the waters of the river from the Olinches dam to the so-called Light Factory.
The tunnel gets dark once you get into the rock so it's not a bad idea to turn on your mobile flashlight or directly take a separate flashlight. It will be about 100 meters in the mountains, that's why. Later, when we come out on the other side we see the river again and a more open channel. The path in this part of the route has wooden benches to sit down to rest a bit and also railings. It arrives like this until Olinches Dam and from there it returns to the Molino Puerto recreational area, along the same path.
From this area the path goes up and up until it reaches a Nice viewpoint that has great views of Chelva, the Pico del Remedio, the Torrecilla watchtower in the background and the Montecico Caves. From here our destination is the Light Factory, a destination we reached by crossing through a green and beautiful vegetation (reeds, baladres and poplars, for example), always listening to the running waters, the same ones used by the Olinches dam.
Here the road forces us to turn around and do the reverse until the Cuckoo Fountain. The yellow and white markings will direct us along a new path that, climbing steeply towards Chelva, leaves us at the gates of the old Moorish neighborhood of Arrabal, of Mudejar origin. The Arrabal began to take shape in the XNUMXth century, outside the walls, and still has many architectural treasures such as the old XNUMXth-century mosque of the Arrabal de Benaeca, the hermitage of Santa Cruz, the Town Council or Old Town Hall and the baroque hermitage of the Desemparados, for example.
Inside the villa there is also the Medieval Christian Quarter, built after the conquest of Jaime I. The truth is that all the neighborhoods that appeared did so around Benacacira and the palace, facing the river and always expanding the wall to shelter them and so that they were not outside the walls. As the people of the town followed the pattern of water, today we can follow this beautiful Water Route in Chelva.
If you are with children and it seems to you that this, even though it is a short tourist route, involves a lot of walking, going up and down, there is a shortcut that you can do with the children and shorten the journey: you arrive by car at the recreational area of Molino Puerto and from there you arrive at the Beach and the Fuente del Cuco. You can even use a children's cart.
Recall that the route is circular so you can start it both in Chelva and in Calles. And of course, beyond the beautiful vegetation and the historic quarters of the towns, the truth is that in the whole area will be surprised with past works. Molino Puerto shows us the remains of a medieval mill; La Playeta has a pool, waterfalls and waterfalls, the Olinches tunnel 107 meters long, the intricate mechanism of gates to regulate the river waters in the dam and generate energy...
Finally, around, we can marvel at works from the past, one of the most important being the Roman aqueduct of the Peña Cortada, one of the four main aqueducts of the Iberian Peninsula. It is a Valencian treasure and the Peña Cortada Trail itself is one of the most beautiful in the Community: you can walk inside a viaduct and go over a Roman aqueduct, something extremely unique and special.