DAILY MAIL ..Saturday 1st May 1999

"In the footsteps of St George" by Ann Bird

A line of burly, sombre-suited men swayed meaningfully towards us in the cool Spanish evening, their arms linked in solidarity, the smoke from their chorizo sized cigars wafting up between the balconied buildings.

Just ahead,their leader flicked a sabre a few feet from me ,his cigar between his teeth, forcing his face into an unnatural grin. It looked like a gathering of gangsters, but this was anything but sinister.

They were preparing for the town's magnificent annual Moors and Christians festival , complete with colourful costumes and fireworks, one of many such festivals that take place all over Spain throughout the year.

The whole spectacle is an evocative , passionate display to celebrate an appearance by Saint George to save Alcoy from Moorish attack back in the 13th century. It was the highlight of my short break intended to be about foot-slogging fun, not fiestas.

We'd been taken to Alcoy by our guide Brian Fagg, a lissom Englishman, who has set up the small Els Frares hotel with his wife Pat in the village of Quatretondeta.

This part of Spain is rightly described as 50km and 50 years from Benidorm. The beach set and the thousand of Costa Blanca expats rarely venture this far into the interior, even though it is only an hour's drive from the sea.

This leaves the countryside almost devoid of tourists, apart, from lovers of the great outdoors on low impact tours, often walking from hotel to hotel, their heavy bags transported on for them. You may go days without seeing other foreigners, but you're likely to receive the warmest of welcomes wherever you lay your hat and haversack. Its easy to reach - an hour from Alicante Airport and just over an hour from Valencia's.

Quatretondeta may be sleepy but it's a deceptively prosperous village that has grown fat on the profits of the 80,000 olive trees within its boundaries. Visitors to the Els Frares hotel can likewise grow fat on the sublime oil pressed from the same olives and used in the fare Pat cooks each night.

Her wonderful dishes helped us march on our stomachs as we set out each morning with Brian to stroll about 12 miles everyday.

Brian broke us in with a gorge walk near Lorcha, a 50 minute minibus ride away, where we traced the route of an old rail track. It was built by Britsh engineers to help bring coal from Newcastle. After about 5 miles, we climbed the hillside along a rocky path and returned to Lorcha. Along the way Brian revealed more about Quatretondeta and how the most dramatic happening recently was a pub brawl. But a pub brawl with a difference. He wasn't sure which of the octogenarian pugilists had won the day. Some 160 people live in the village and more than 100 of them are at least 70 years old.

Brian's hotel gets its name from a series of pinnacles called Els Frares - the friars- which we wandered by in the hills above the village. They are thought to be formed from a coral reef and have been blown into the shape of penitent monks by the wind. " just up here you can see the whole of Africa" he said teasingly. This was no mean boast, because the north coast of Africa is hundreds of miles in almost the opposite direct.

But as we turned the corner there, indeed, was Africa - a huge natural hole in the rock, shaped like the continent.

Sepia photographs of it on the hotel walls showed toned bronze walkers sitting in it decades ago.

Below, towards the sea, was Guadalest, a medieval village topped by a castle that is one of the country's most popular sites, with visitors swarming in from Benidorm, Alicante and Valencia.

Meanwhile, up here in the sierra, with no other walkers in sight and the chill spring breeze fragrant with wild sage, it was almost impossible to imagine this region as a teeming tourist hot spot.