It's a week since Lynne & Mal returned to the UK, and we've tidied up the house, finished a couple of projects, notably the mosaic planter, been for walks in the hills and now the car is packed ready for touring. We're aiming to drive for no more than 3 hours in a day, though I daresay that rule will be broken fairly soon. Tomorrow's hotel is booked in the Ciudad de Sciencia in Valencia - watch this space.

On Saturday morning we left Mazarron for the 5 hour drive to Toledo, a World Heritage site in Castilla y Mancha and the capital of Medieval Spain. It's a fortress on a hill in a bend of the river Tajo, originally Moorish, conquered by Christians, and inhabited by Jews, Muslims and Christans in peaceful cooperation for a few centuries. Our hotel had many Moorish features, including a lifesize suit of armour, tiles and Moorish arches echoing those in the city cent...

Murcia City is the regional capital of Murcia. It has many beautiful buildings dating from the mid 1800s when its wealth was built on mining and agriculture. The week after Easter is the Fiesta de Primaverde (spring) but also the Entierro de Sardino (The burial of the Sardine). Think of celebrating the end of winter and the start of a new agricultural year, that just about sums it up. We were there on the Thursday after Easter. On Wednesday there had been proces...

Today we drove west for 40 minutes on the winding road through the mountains to Cartagena, a port fought over by the Romans and Africans for centuries therefore full of references to the two cultures. The Roman theatre, the Moorish castle keep and 1970s flats jostle in the centre, and every so often there is a bit of archaelogy exposed in between. More recently, in 1937 Cartagena was supporting the Madrid government with arms, so was bombed by the Fascists - Ita...

Today we explored the mountains via Totana and a detour to the market, one of the best in the area. We bought bread, cheese, ham & olives and headed up into the mountains, to the information centre then settled ourselves at a picnic table in the woods. We had hoped to see wild boar, who often visit the picnic areas hoping to join in, but had no luck. We followed the Dinosaur walk, but were talking too much and missed the dinosaur-footprint shaped rock. Howev...