Spain - Day 3

Just to the south of Murcia city is the El Valle and Carrascoy Regional Park. It has many hiking routes and tracks. Diego our Airbnb host had recommended one in particular so we did this today.

We drove to the Fuensanta Sanctuary and parked. First we had a little wander round the buildings there. The views back over the city were good.

We then started our hike, heading for the peak called Cresta del Gallo. It was fairly easy going, on tracks mainly through pine forests with occasional good views across the park.

At the peak, at about 480m, there was a little scrambling to do to get to the end.

We stopped for lunch there in a sunny sheltered spot, and were joined by a baby mountain goat.

On the way back down we passed through a very large picnic area.

The walk was just over 13km.

Once back at the car we drove round to a visitor's centre. A helpful lady there directed us to a path to a different visitor's centre and museum, which we took but it turned out to be further away than we expected, a good half hour's walk.

It was worth it though as you can get onto the roof for great views over an archaeological dig site next to it, where a monastery used to be.

The museum had interesting exhibits related to the silk industry in the area.

This was a further 2km walk.

We then drove back to the apartment. We discovered we could get onto the roof, which had a great view back to the Cresta del Gallo that we'd climbed to earlier.

For dinner we had burgers with chips, fried onions, and sweetcorn.