After the Maratón del Santo Grial: Sagunto

The Route: Navajas → Sagunto → Navajas Logistics: Car, about 30 minutes each way on the A-23. The lower town is level; the theatre and castle sit on a steep ridge. Marathon Month: May Duration: Day trip

Navajas ──(about 30 mins by car, A-23)──> Sagunto ──(about 30 mins)──> Navajas

The Maratón del Santo Grial runs down the Vía Verde de Ojos Negros, the trackbed of a railway built to carry iron ore from the mines in Teruel to the coast. Sagunto is where it went. The day after the race, following the line the rest of the way to the sea gives the run a beginning and an end.

May in Sagunto is warm and dry in most years, usually in the low to mid-twenties by afternoon, and the Mediterranean is warming up. The ridge above the town has no shade, so go in the morning.

The drive from Navajas is about 30 minutes down the A-23 towards Valencia. The Cercanías line from Caudiel to Valencia also connects Navajas and Sagunto directly, but it is infrequent; check the timetable before planning around it.

The Roman theatre and the castle

Sagunto was the Iberian and then Roman town of Saguntum, whose siege by Hannibal in 219 BC set off the Second Punic War. The Roman theatre is cut into the hillside above the old town and was controversially rebuilt with modern materials in the 1990s; it is still used for summer performances. The castle above it stretches for most of a kilometre along the ridge, a sequence of walled enclosures built up from Roman times through the Moorish and Christian periods.

This is the difficult part for post-marathon legs. The lane up to the theatre is steep and cobbled, and the castle adds more climbing and uneven ground with no shade. A taxi can take some of the height out. For sore legs, the theatre alone is enough, and the old town's Jewish quarter lanes below it are gentler. Check opening days and times before the drive, since heritage sites in the region often close on Monday.

Puerto de Sagunto

The port district a few kilometres away by car is where the ore trains ended. The steelworks built there in the early twentieth century have gone, except for Blast Furnace No. 2 (Alto Horno nº 2), kept as an industrial monument. It stands on flat ground and takes minutes to see from outside. The long, level beach promenade nearby is the best recovery walk of the day.

Lunch and the return

Eat by the sea at the port, where the restaurants serve Valencian rice dishes and fish. Allow 30 minutes to drive back to Navajas.