Hitchhiking to Santa Pola’s Salt Hills
No taxi, no bus – just a thumb out by the road. I set off from the airport hotel near Alicante to reach the salt hills of Santa Pola, hitchhiking the old-fashioned way and seeing who would stop.
Salt, flamingos and white hills
Santa Pola sits beside vast salt pans – the salinas – where seawater is evaporated into great white mounds of salt, and flamingos pick through the shallow lagoons. It is a strange, flat, glittering landscape, and getting there under my own steam (and a few kind drivers) made it feel properly earned.
Watch the whole hitch above.
Related walks
If you enjoyed this one, you might like the rest of the Costa Blanca trip:
- Refusing to Be a Typical Tourist in Alicante — trying not to do the typical-tourist routine in Alicante.
- What’s in the Mountains Near Elche, Spain? — what’s hiding in the mountains behind Elche.
- Tabarca Island: Paradise Until the Pills Kicked In — a small Mediterranean island that wasn’t quite the paradise I expected.
- I Walked from Alicante Airport in the Dark (and Got Lost) — walking out of the airport in the dark — and getting lost.
Stay in touch
New walks land on the channel regularly — the easiest way to follow along is to subscribe on YouTube. The full set of written companions to every film lives in The Journal, and there’s a curated set of the longer pieces on the Featured Films page. If you’ve got an idea for somewhere I should walk next, send it through the Contact page — I read everything.
Patrick Ashton is a UK-based filmmaker walking the overlooked corners of Britain and Europe. More about Patrick →
