Guardamar del Segura & Dune Forest

Guardamar del Segura is a quietly remarkable place. Situated at the mouth of the Segura river, about 25 minutes south of Vista del Sol, it is home to one of the most unusual landscapes in the whole of Spain: a vast forest of stone pines and eucalyptus trees planted directly on enormous coastal sand dunes, their roots stabilising what was once a moving desert that threatened to engulf the town entirely.

The story begins in the 1890s. The town of Guardamar was being slowly buried by advancing sand dunes driven inland by coastal winds. In an extraordinary feat of ecological engineering, local authorities and the Spanish state began planting hundreds of thousands of trees directly onto the dunes. Over several decades, the forest took hold and the dunes were stabilised. Today the Parque Forestal de Guardamar covers over 800 hectares — a cool, fragrant pine forest growing on dunes that still rise up to 15 metres in places, threaded with wide cycling and walking paths and opening onto a series of uncrowded natural beaches.

The beaches here — Playa del Rebollo, Playa de la Roqueta, Playa Moncayo — are among the least-developed on the Costa Blanca. The dune-forest backdrop makes them visually unlike any other beach in the region. In peak summer they can be busy with Spanish families, but nothing like the major resorts, and in shoulder season they are often nearly empty.

The town of Guardamar itself has a pleasant traditional character — a good weekly market, a decent selection of seafood restaurants along the harbourfront, and the remains of a Phoenician and Iberian settlement at Cabezo Lucero, free to visit.