The Valencia Community is a great place for museums and they are nothing like those stuffy institutions of yesteryear.
From the ‘floating museum’ - the Delfín submarine in Torrevieja - through to the wine museum in Utiel and the Oceanographic in Valencia, there is something to suit all tastes.

Even the Valencia countryside provides the scenery to enhance works of art, as I discovered recently when travelling inland.
There are 77 large outdoor sculptures created by 46 sculptors from 12 different countries spread throughout the region.
I visited the tiny village of Arroyo de Cerezo and thought my eyes were playing tricks when I spotted a face set in a wall. On closer inspection, I noticed another gruesome looking character staring at me from what appeared to be a bricked-up window of a house.
I was in the middle of nowhere miles away from the beaten track and imagine my surprise when I read the plaque naming the work and artist and realised it was in English!
British sculptress Diane Gorvin created Echoing Walls last year when she made 12 faces - 11 in bronze and one in glass.
The sculptress received the ‘silver apple’ for the faces, a prize awarded by a panel of fellow artists.

Leaving the village I came across a fabulous construction made from branches of trees depicting an enormous horse.
The detail of the work was incredible and I learned that the artist had also won the ‘silver apple’.
Again, I stopped in my tracks when I saw that another Brit had created the horse. Philip Bews made the piece two years ago and he returned to the village last year to help friend and fellow-artist Diane Gorvin to set up the faces.

Having found two interesting works of art in the open-air, I then set out on a mission to hunt for more. I arrived in the ancient town of Castielfabib and sure enough, I came across a huge pair of hands that looked as though they were coming through the wall of a house.
There was no plaque giving any explanation so perhaps they belonged to the faces in the neighbouring village?
Just outside the town I started to drive down the long windy road and came to one particularly sharp bend with a rough track leading off it.

That is when out of the corner of my eye I saw something that blended in perfectly with the scenery yet for some reason I knew it shouldn't have been there. It was a huge mountain goat looking out over the valley below.
This was yet another sculpture called Macho Montés. Artist Julián Pacheco Rebollo created this piece that it is so life-like that at first glance I thought it was real.
Although entrance to the museums in the Valencian Community is either free or reasonably priced, you can find open-air art galleries in the countryside where you don't have to queue up to get in and can enjoy the fabulous background scenery at the same time.