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This section details some of the background information that you may find useful if you are planning a trip to the Costa Blanca. It covers things like the weather, the best time to climb, how to get there and where to stay as well as how to hire a car or buy that forgotten piece of vital kit. The Best Time to Climb Any times a good time to climb but if you want the best that the Costa Blanca can offer then check out the following page for the low-down on the local weather and certain climbing restrictions - Time to Climb You will want to fly into Alicante airport. This is the main arrival point for Benidorm and most of the rest of the Costa Blanca so there are numerous flights from all the British airports. Prices vary, dependent on the time of year and the departure airport but expect to pay somewhere between £80 and £160. There are a number of budget airlines offering very cheap flights to Alicante: www.easyjet.com I have also organised my flights through Flightline. They have a web page where you can enter your departure and destination airports and it produces a fairly complete list of available flights. All very easy and it seems to work fine. I had no problems with the flights other than the all too common delays. There are also good package deals available with accommodation and flight included. This can be particularly good during the normal low season, November - March. Try the high street shops, Ceefax or the web for these. Getting Around I hope that you'll find all the details that you require about hiring a car and driving around the Costa Blanca on this page - Car Hire. Accommodation Check out the Accommodation page to find details on organising your accommodation, of course. Insurance Ensure you don't end up with a 10,000 pound hospital bill because that first hold came off and you twisted your ankle. Check out the Insurance page. Accidents & Emergencies Should something awful go wrong and a rescue or ambulance required you need to phone the central emergency number: 112. This central system will contact the nearest rescue team and will co-ordinate the rescue with them. This call is free, even on mobiles. 'The competence in Rescue services in the Valencian Community is from the Fire Department, but they aren't professional climbers. The other Rescue Team is the Guardia Civil, they have a professional Mountain Rescue Team and they have good training.' - Thanks to David Mora for these details Restaurants Spanish do great food at extremely affordable prices so check out the Restaurant page for all those great places to eat. There is a sports shop in Calpe that now stocks quite a decent range of climbing equipment. This includes several of the local climbing guides. Sport O'95, Avenida Gabriel Miro 27, Calpe 03710 Website: www.zero95.com 'The Calpe Sports Shop is about 3/4 of the way up the hill on the left of the main shopping street which runs up from the sea in Calpe.' - Thanks to Alan James There are a number of other shops in the Costa Blanca that sell climbing gear: Agujetas Nativos (Villena) Deportes Aitana (Elche) El Refugio (Alicante) Thanks to David Mora Garcia for the above details. Here are a few tips as to what to buy: 'Boreal diablos were about about 9600 pts which is about £40, they are usually about £55 here. The other shoes were around that degree cheaper, they had the full boreal range, and a couple of other shoes. Not too surprissing given that Boreal are Spanish. The krabs were around 700pts, screw gates were around 1000 and an extender set was about 1200. They had the CE mark and were tested in England so are probably up to the mark. They also had some brass nuts at around 400-500 pts each, they were Czech and rated for 6kn. They had a little trad gear, a selection of a few nuts and a couple of Aliens (same price as UK). They had about 6 ropes, I looked at an Edelweis 60m, which I worked out to be about £125.' - Thanks to Richard Fox for these tips The Days Off
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