Private transfer from Valencia Airport to Altea

Altea sits on the Costa Blanca between Calpe and Benidorm, and its centre is a hillside old town of whitewashed houses and steep cobbled lanes climbing to the church of Nuestra Señora del Consuelo, whose blue-and-white tiled domes are the town's signature. It draws a quieter crowd than nearby Benidorm: artists, second-home owners and couples in spring and autumn, families in summer. The seafront is pebble rather than sand, with Playa de la Roda along the promenade and the darker volcanic stone at Cap Negret to the north. Puerto Deportivo Luis Campomanes has restaurants and moorings, and golfers head inland to Altea la Vella. It's a slower, more residential base than the resort towns around it.

The route runs almost entirely on motorway. From Valencia Airport you loop around the city on the ring roads and pick up the A-7/AP-7 heading south through the Ribera and past Gandia, Oliva and Dénia. Much of it is flat farmland and orchards, with the sea appearing intermittently on your left. Approaching Altea the terrain becomes hillier as the road skirts the Sierra de Bernia and the coast tightens around Calpe's Peñón de Ifach, which is visible from the motorway. The final stretch leaves the AP-7 and drops down towards the coast on the N-332, with a short set of local streets into town. Total driving time is roughly an hour and a half in normal traffic, longer on summer weekends.

Tell the driver exactly where you're staying. The old town above the church is a maze of narrow, one-way lanes with no vehicle access to many streets — you may be dropped at the edge and walk the last stretch uphill, so pack light or bring wheeled cases you can carry. If you're staying in the Campomanes marina area, the Altea Hills urbanisation or towards Albir, these are separate zones several kilometres apart, so give a full address rather than just