Day 2: Lorca, Águilas and Bolnuevo

It was a warm day when we woke up in Totana this morning, although overcast rather than sunny. We ate breakfast on the patio outside the house, before setting off in the car towards our first destination of the day: Lorca.

The small town of Lorca is situated about half an hour southwest of Totana. Getting to the outskirts of the town itself was fairly straightforward but we were heading to Lorca to visit one specific site: Lorca castle. As you might expect, the castle is perched high on a hill above the town itself, and navigating to that was a bit more of a challenge. We made it to the castle car park in the end though and it turned out we could park there for free, so that was a definite bonus.

There was a short uphill walk from the car park to the castle, although nowhere near as far as it would have been if we'd walked up from the town itself.

As we walked, we had a view down towards Lorca.

Entry to the castle cost €10 each for adults, although the system of entry was quite confusing; the castle consists of various different towers and each of these seemed to be open for different hours of the day.

The first tower didn't open until 11.30, so we had a while to explore.

We admired a trebuchet while we waited...

...as well as the views of the surrounding countryside.

Then it was time to climb the tower itself.

We started by going down to the dungeons of the castle, which were slightly scary!

Then it was up a couple of staircases to the top, from where we had some great views.

From here we could see that the castle complex is really quite large.

There was a bit more to explore...

...and we were able to walk along the castle walls for a while.

There were various other archaeological sites at the castle but we weren't there at the right times for them to be open, so after a while we decided to head back to the car.

We drove for another half or hour or so, this time south towards the coast.

This was the seaside town of Águilas, which is in the south of the Murcia region.

It still wasn't very sunny but we had some nice views of the sea...

...and of the local castle.

We didn't climb up to this one, but found a cafe where we could get a late lunch. Then it was on to our final stop of the day: Bolnuevo!

Bolnuevo was a place advertised on the local tourism board website as being a key visitor attraction in the Murcia region.

It's famous for having rocks, which are shaped like mushrooms.

The unusual shapes are heavily eroded sandstone.

They're interesting - and they do indeed look like mushrooms - but there were just considerably fewer of them than we expected. It didn't take long to see them all!