It’s January and today it has been 23ºC in the shade! This is what we came to Spain for.

Our bedtime car park proved to be a little noisy last night. Not so much from car noise but it turned out to be near a railway line. Luckily Sarah and I can go to sleep with any amount of noise, so we were not much disturbed.

Today we had a short journey of just over an hour to our first stop for the day, Elche. Elche is famed, and has been awarded UNESCO World Heritage status, for its exotic palm forests, originally planted by the Moors. These are spread all over the town and provide a considerable income from dates. The leaves from the male trees are also apparently much in demand for Palm Sunday services across Spain.

Basil was parked up on a suitable car park near to the very new looking University and we wandered into the town centre before lunch. The municipal park, dominated by palms, was very beautiful and contained a number of fountains which put Xativa’s offerings yesterday to shame, albeit that today’s were not 400 years old!

We called in at the Tourist Information office and picked up a map. It was at this point that we realised that we had left Basil’s fridge on battery power. Unfortunately the fridge draws so much electricity that it can flatten our two chunky batteries fairly quickly. So Sarah volunteered to return to Basil while I searched for bread for lunch and had a quick look at the very compact old town.

It didn’t take me long to explore the two squares which essentially made up the old town. There was the obligatory Cathedral and a town hall, parts of which date back to the Moors.

Having returned to Basil with bread we had lunch and then moved 45 minutes down the road to Orihuela. The idea was to park up on a large municipal car park (38.087789, -0.937944) and then be ready to explore the old town in the morning. To prepare I walked to the Tourist Information office and found that we had struck gold. This weekend, starting at midday tomorrow, is Orihuela’s 22nd Medieval Festival. I was given a list of events in English and it looks, on paper at least, really interesting. One thing that caught my eye was that “all taverns will be open until 1am”. We might be spending a second night on this car park!