Peñiscola Castle

Peñiscola is a modern holiday resort in the Valencia region with an historic castle. To pronounce the place name without embarrasment, it’s pen-YIS-cola.

This is the resort with its wide, sandy beach as seen from the castle battlements.

Now the castle as seen from the wide, sandy beach! The beach is deserted as the weather is changeable and rain is forecast.

The castle was built by the Templars at the end of the 13^th century on the site of a Moorish fort, and was turned into a papal palace for pope Benedict XIII from 1417 to 1423. It’s a nicely traditional castle in appearance as the next few photos show.

The church of Santa Maria above was built at the same time as the castle on the site of an Arab mosque.

Because of its well preserved and atmospheric structure, the castle has been used many times as a film location, including a current TV favourite Game of Thrones.

The castle hill also contains a small town with narrow alleys and tall whitewashed houses.

With all these visitable treasures come the tourists, and the tourist shops. Plenty of tat here in this pretty street, some of it quite good quality to be fair, but all well overpriced.

Worth examining is the intricate pavement made from tiny, coloured pebbles arranged into patterns. The tradesman who did the work must have been good at jigsaw puzzles. A pair of legs conveniently left in the photo gives an idea of scale. 

Castle done, and a stroll along the prom before going back to the campsite. As previously described, it’s a lovely beach of fine sand – hence the possibility of what we come across next. It’s Leonardo’s “The Last Supper”, carved out of sand. The guy with the yellow back-pack is keeping it moist

by spraying it with water while his assistant on the other side is doing more carving. What a way to earn your supper!

The detail is quite remarkable, by far the best sand sculpture we have seen, illustrated by the next close-up

It is truly surprising what you stumble across sometimes; we had spent a thoroughly interesting couple of hours in Peniscola before heading back to our site.