Huerta & Horchata

North of Valencia, a medieval irrigation system still waters one of Europe's oldest market gardens. The huerta is where the city's food comes from - and where the tiger nuts for horchata, Valencia's own drink, actually grow. UNESCO lists the water tribunal that governs it as intangible heritage; it has met every Thursday for a thousand years.

We walk the lanes between the fields, past whitewashed alquerías and irrigation channels laid out under the Moors, and finish in Alboraia at a horchatería where the drink is made from the family's own harvest - served properly, with fartons for dunking.

This is the gentlest tour I run and one of the most loved: real countryside twenty minutes from the cathedral, and a food story you can taste at the end.