Well, we finally decided where to spend Christmas. Thanks to everyone who voted in our poll, it was fun to see your answers, but even though over half of you think we should spend Christmas on a beach, we are going for a city. Not Barcelona though — all the accomodation we looked at was either overpriced or seemed like a party location.

Instead, we decided that we had the time to make it further south to Valencia, where we will stay in the Home Deluxe Hostel. It gets excellent reviews and looks like an interesting spot. All the rooms are decorated by different artists, they only do double or twin rooms so in some ways it is more like a hotel, but we also get the benefit of having a kitchen to cook in to save money.

Our route to Valencia will be largely an inland one, as we’ve heard how busy and unpleasant the coast road can be. The trade-off is that we will have some climbing to do over the mountains but after having climbed 800 meters to our WWOOF farm we feel ready for the challenge.

From Valencia, we will cycle south towards Morocco, route yet to be determined. If you have any tips for us, please let us know! We haven’t yet got a map of Spain so our planning at this stage is fairly rough. We are also hoping to arrange another WWOOF stay, probably in the Granada area.