Hermitage Route of Altea .:. A Sunny Wednesday Walk

There is a yearly event here in the neighboring town that is called Ruta de las Ermitas, and I suppose that the English translation isn't correct, but I gave it a go... It is more like a "route of chapels" as it takes place around different chapels around the town...

Altea is a small town in Spain with only around 20-25K residents, but it has a large history and some emblematic places to see... I suppose that the number of citizens was a lot lower in the past, but despite that, you can find over 10 small chapels in, and around, the town! To keep them preserved and to give them a use case in modern days, once per year there is an event called Ruta de las Ermitas... In 10-15 days, every day there is a classical music concert which takes place in a different chapel... As the town was developing fast, some of the chapels "stayed" in some really weird places... In the middle of an orange grove, on a hill outside the town, etc.

The last couple of years (and this year too), my son was playing in one of these... The walk that I have shared today took place exactly a year ago and it was a beautiful day for a walk... This year, I went to the chapel in the photo by car, to pick up my son who was in the audience this time, but it was unfortunately bad weather... I didn't enter the concert, but it was INSIDE the chapel and I suppose with fewer audience as there is no way that all these people would fit inside...

Back to the walk! I'm still doing my walks, but as I'm doing the #HHHLive on Wednesday, I can't find time to post in the #WednesdayWalk community... 😞 And I really miss that! As I had some other obligations today, I couldn't do the show, but I can do this post, so here we are... :)

Today, I'm taking you on a route around Altea, in the orange grove part of the town... As you can see, there are almost no houses and the only thing that you can see are oranges!!! 😃

April is the part of the year where you can see orange flowers blooming and at the same time, fruits still hanging on the trees! Before moving to Spain, I didn't even know that something like that could happen! I was taught that trees bloom in Spring and you reap fruits in Autumn... And here you can see both "processes" at the same time! :)

Every year, I find at least one of the oranges that are stuck like this one in the photo... It reminds me of a documentary where I saw people cultivating melons to grow in a cubical shape! This orange has a unique shape thanks to the fence... 😃

This is one of my favorite plantations on the route... When I discovered this "route", these trees were freshly planted and today, they are full of fruits... Most of these trees that you can see in the photo above aren't oranges, but lemons! There is one particular tree among them (I didn't take a photo this time), on which you can see both fruits, oranges and lemons on one tree! How great is that!

If you checked one of my old #WednesdayWalk posts you have probably noticed that I like one another type of tree... No, not olives... Olives are great, but carob tree is even better... Especially when I find one like this one... Who knows what it looked like when it was in "its prime", but it doesn't give up... If there is a small healthy part of a trunk, it will continue to grow! Maybe it doesn't look as pretty as some other trees, but it is old, and it still stands defying hard times!

The name of the house behind is "L'Amrosia", but the plant in front is one of the agave plants... One interesting fact about this plant that I didn't know is that when it grows flower, it dies after... So, if you have planted one, you kind of don't want to see the flower... 😃

This is how the road looks like when I take these walks and already mentioned olive trees that can be found in this jungle of oranges... 😃

Another interesting fruit that can be found in this area... I have already mentioned it in some of my previous posts too... What you see in the photo above are medlars which need a few days/weeks to become perfectly tasty! 😃

Papaya is another fruit that is not common in this area... Actually, this is one of the two places where I saw it and nowhere else...

And we got to our "final destination" of this route... The San Isidro chapel... I was a few minutes early so I had time to play around with my phone camera trying to catch the perfect photo of the chapel and the sun in the background...