Xátiva

It's a very attractive town, but this morning was too cold to spend time looking around, especially given that we had another 600 km ahead of us. So this is just a quick snap for my door series, taken on the way from the hotel to the car. Which, thankfully, was still there with all our luggage intact. Maybe we'll have an opportunity to explore the town on the way home.

The drive was made more interesting by our encounter with a snowstorm in, of all places, Alicante. The snow wasn't really settling on the road, but it was falling very heavily, so caution was required. Fortunately by the time we got to Lorca the temperature had risen to a few degrees above freezing. We paused for a 10-euro menu del día, which was as good as you would expect a 10-euro menu to be: not fancy, but copious and good value for money (I couldn't finish my tortilla).

When we arrived in Velez de Benaudalla, it was nearly 5 pm and a fine English drizzle was falling. H and R arrived with the keys to our home for the next month, and we then had a bit of a hectic time trying to get the heating in the apartment to work. Several reinforcements were called in and we even found the manual, but no-one succeeded in getting anything but cold air to come out of it. Luckily one of the reinforcements had a gas heater he wasn't using, so we got that set up. By the time everyone left we were exhausted. But the presents from our housesitters meant we had tea bags, milk, and chocolate biscuits to hand to help us recover.

After that, a bit of local shopping provided wine and jamón on the sofa. An update from our housesitters informed us that Mystère had allowed both of them to stroke him, so it's all good. I'm glad we were able to leave him at home in comfort rather than subject him (and by extension us) to the two-day drive there and back.

PS sorry, I have been unable to keep up with everyone else's blips for days! Normal service to be resumed shortly.