Days 106 & 107 - To be the man who walked a thousand miles...

Sunday 28th & Monday 29th OctoberI would just like you to compare the following 2 photos and kindly explain to me, "What in the name of tarnation happened!?"Did you spot the difference? Did you? Exactly! A drop in temperatures of more than 26 degrees centigrade (43 degrees Fahrenheit for our US readers)!These photos were taken just 3 days apart. The second, as if to add insult to injury, was taken at a more southerly latitude!Yes, we have moved further south for climbing. It is however, colder here, in the Murcia region of Spain than it was on most of our early morning starts in the Alps at high altitude, on glaciers, wearing crampons!If you read the link for Murcia, you will see that...

This region boast[s] over 3,000 hours of sunshine a year, and its coastline is bathed by the warm waters of two seas. In fact, its coast is known as the Costa Cálida (the balmy coast)...

Sounds lovely doesn't it? Sounds toasty warm. Sounds like climbing weather...Well, not today it ain't. Today it's like a bloomin' fridge. Why am I complaining? I hear you ask...I would like to refer you to the following average annual temperatures for Murcia...Check out October, or even November. It says nothing about temperatures of 6 degrees centigrade with a maximum daytime temperature of 10 degrees.Mrs P had to have a hot water bottle!Ok, so I may be over egging it and I may be overusing the exclamation mark a tad but, jeepers. We're freezing to death here! (Look, there's another one.)On Monday we brave the elements and go for a walk. The photos may look sunny but, I tell you, it was hell out there. Our sandwiches nearly blew away, we couldn't wear shorts... need I list more hardships? The locals are pretty close to declaring a state of emergency. We may need the army to airdrop blankets and chicken soup.We joined up 2 local walks from the campsite we are staying at in El Berro. One of 10km, the other of 7km.The walk is unfortunately pretty disappointing. No great views, not much in the way of up and down, scrappy paths. Certainly nothing to write home about... erm... Oops!The best part about the walk is perhaps the comma vs decimal point anomaly. Let me explain; In the UK we use a period as a decimal point i.e. 5.4km. In much of Europe however, they use a comma i.e. 5,4km. Generally speaking this goes pretty much unnoticed. Round these parts however, and some would say with typical Spanish carefree abandon, they like to add some entirely unnecessary zeros. So, you get signs like this...This is great because it looks like we walked one heck of a long way.As the walk lacked views of note my eye was drawn to the minutiae of my surroundings. So, for want of photos of stunning vistas, I will leave you with the following images...