Novelda to Murcia 26.09.11

On our drive south we detoured about 20 kms to a small regional city called Novelda. We had read in our DK book that it was worth a visit just to see a casa that was all done up in moderniste style, which I knew would appeal to Di and I was quite keen to see too. The house had been saved from demolition in the 1970's (thankfully)- it was gorgeous.



?Town hall I think. You can just see elderly men sitting chatting under the left hand arch



Men chatting in the shade

An interesting building in the town

The outside of the moderniste casa

Some of the "art deco" interior



A slightly "over the top" room




Looking up the spiral staircase at the ceiling



The centre of the building had a "lift shaft" without any lift, from the ground floor to third floor, it was to allow light in and also very interesting feature, surrounding with wood. This is looking through it at the 2nd floor to the staircase.



Looking through the "lift shaft" from one side of the building to Di and Hilary in the opposite room.



Detail on one of the arches

The front door

Once we had been here we went back down the road to the information centre, more for the building than the info as we didn't expect to spend much more time in the town as we had other things to see and places to be.

Staircase in information centre building

We stopped off at a church on our way back to the truck, another beauty.

The back of the church complete with tiled dome roof.

From Novelda we continued south. We wanted to see a city called Elche or Elx (they all have two names down here), which the DK book had suggested was worth a look as it has 300,000 palm tress planted around it, they think from Phoenician times (is that where Phoenix palm comes from??). Anyway, what we thought was a small town turned out to be a big city, we saw lots of palms indeed, but getting around was a bit difficult, so we missed the best parts unfortunately, pretty much bypassing the town and heading down towards Murcia to our designated camp-stop.
It's nice here, very quiet (apart from more barking dogs??? I don't know what the story is, they bark all night somewhere over in the fields, not sure who owns them and how they have managed to survive, but there seems to be a dog pack barking where ever we are here in lower Spain.) The camp-site is only a year old, in fact our first night was their first anniversary so the owners invited all the campers (only about 4 trucks full as the summer season is over) for a traditional dessert called paparajotes. It is lemon-leaves dipped in a pancake type batter, flavoured with lemon zest, and deep fried, then dipped in cinnamon and sugar. You don't eat the lemon leaf, it slips out really easily, but it flavours the batter, and is yummy!!!!!!!!!

The owner (he is huge!!) cooking up paparajotes

Paparajotes and fresh peppers

The camp-site is in the centre of a lemon tree crop (the citrus of choice down here, Valencia further north has the oranges), the scent from the lemons is delicious and the cool green all around very calming and pleasant. We are 9 kms from Murcia by bike along a track through the lemon trees for the first kilometre and then it joins an asphalted cycle track along beside the river all the way into Murcia city.