Day 10 - Granada - Murcia

Up with the larks today! We took breakfast in the hotel this morning. A lovely spread of fruit and cold meats and breads and decent coffee.

We checked out and a grumpy taxi driver took us back to the car park where our car has been resting for a few days.

We are on the road today to Murcia. Valencia is our final stop, but it’s quite a stretch to drive that from Granada in one day. Murcia is a good stopping point. Quite a major town with lots of choices of hotels. We had originally booked a hotel near the cathedral but changed it a few days ago to large hotel with a pool. The pool is such a nice thing to have after a day in the sun. It also included parking, so no more pulling cases through cobbled streets.

Our route took us around the northern border of the Sierra Nevada National Park - quite a long dull motorway, with barren, craggy landscape either side.

We were heading to a seaside town called Águilas. I had picked this out from a map as a midpoint and as it has some notable rock formations on the beach. Not that we are into rocks particularly, just that it seemed more interesting than a normal beach.

We stopped at a service station for a drink and the lady that served us was fascinated with Oliver and how tall he was! She even offered to marry him!

Just before and after Águilas we started to pass lots of white tented fields. Acre upon acre. Oliver had studied this in Geography and told us that around Almeria the majority of Europe’s fruit and vegetables are grown. These “greenhouses“ are just plastic tents. Such is the size of this sea of plastic that sunbeams reflected off it are said to have caused the local climate to cool. Think about that when you are next tucking in your tomatoes imported from Spain. A rather unsavoury by-product is the plastic, much of which ends up in the sea.

Interestingly, my friend Lisa, who moved to the Suffolk countryside last year sent me a picture of her crop of tomatoes today. Makes you realise that growing you own has to be a good alternative. (photo shared with her kind permission)

We arrived at Águilas just in time for lunch, and thanks to Andrew’s expert driving we found our way down the narrow streets to the car park. This is not your usual package holiday part of the coast.m, but where the Spanish spend their holidays - leaving the hot cities to us crazy tourists. They were bobbing around in the sea and sitting under their colourful umbrellas.

We walked along the promenade and found a nice restaurant looking over the harbour. We had salads and Oliver had chicken. Delicious! The flies tried to enjoy it with us. Oliver said the flies in Spain are very confident! I just think they are a pest!

We walked the rest of the harbour, through a closed up fairground (sure to open later) and marvelled at the wonderful lighthouse guarding the rocks.

Águilas really was a happy accident. A beautiful little town. By the time we walked back, the beach was empty, all the clever Spanish tucked away in their cool apartments until later in the day.

Back to the motorway and an hour to our final stop - Murcia, which is a University city.

We have now left Andalucía. We covered 5 of the 8 provinces - Sevilla, Cadiz, Malaga, Granada and Almeria.

The hotel is huge. Very much a conference centre hotel, but the room is big and clean and the pool was most welcome.

We walked the 30 minute stroll into Murcia old Town for dinner. The outskirts didn’t feel so safe, or clean. But the main square and beautiful tree lined boulevards are lovely. It’s a quiet city (not sure if it always is). We sat in the plaza in front of the theatre and ate a delicious meal of pasta and pizza and took a slow walk back to the hotel with ice cream. Oliver had an ice cream sandwich (ice cream in two cookies) which he said was phenomenal!

It seems a shame not to have seen more of Murcia but we think we have the balance right between travel and relaxing.

It’s been a lovely day.