Costa Blanca Climbing

One of the great things about the Costa Blanca is the ability to do outdoor sports – pretty much throughout the year. For anyone living here this is a tremendous luxury and this is particularly true of sports that require dry weather.

Certainly, Mediterranean Spain tends to bathe in the luxury of over 300 clear days a year and this is a boon whether you are a walker, golfer, cyclist, sailor or, like myself, a rock climber. All of a sudden you can find that the frustrations of living in Northern Europe and battling the weather largely disappear. In fact, the endurance element (with regard to the weather) of your particular sport can be left, thankfully, well behind.

Rock climbing, of course, is a very weather dependent sport (you can only climb when rock is dry!) and it is therefore an excellent gauge of what you can do on the Costa Blanca if you are keen on outdoor sports. To that end, I tend to climb every weekend and, during the summer, one evening a week. Amazingly, I doubt that my climbing is disrupted by adverse weather more than 7 or eight times a year.

Of course, the pleasure of climbing on the Costa Blanca is enhanced by the fact that Spain (in the Mediterranean areas) tends to be warm the moment the sun is out. By this I mean that a clear sky and sun equals warmth almost irrespective of the time of year. This is unlike Northern Europe where a sunny day in the winter can still be bitterly cold.

As to climbing on the Costa Blanca, there are almost unlimited crags to climb. Better still, the majority of these are bolted and extremely well cared for thus making the sport just about as safe as it can be. This is a pleasure for the serious climber and beginner alike.

I tend to climb around the Valencia and Alicante area which is notable for its superb quality of climbing. Indeed, it has everything to offer from long pitches, traditional routes, short, tough crags and areas ideal for beginners. There are even sea cliffs to climb – enabling you to spend part of the day on the beach before taking on some challenging routes!

Fortunately, the Spanish are active climbers with many towns having a climbing club. These invariably publish details of crags and their routes on their web sites thus making it easy to access information regarding where and what to climb. Meanwhile, Rockfax have guides on climbing in Spain that are well worth obtaining.