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Romans and Arabs used to go for a scrub up in the naturally hot spring water that bubbles out of the ground at Los Baños de Fortuna about 30km from Pinoso. Maggie, my partner and industrious Country Fincas’ employee, and her chum Ros decided to do the same a little while ago.

In what we would call Victorian times a husband and wife team recognised the potential for building a small tourist resort around the hot spring. They put in the pool, treatment rooms, hotels, cafeterias and a park. They even threw in a religious shrine for good measure. Nowadays it is a full blown health spa cum leisure complex.

Ros and Maggie bathed in the hot waters. They hired sunbeds. They sipped on long drinks and they didn’t gossip nor did they take any of the massage type treatments. Just after 2pm, tired from her exertions, Maggie suggested lunch. She’s really got the hang of this Spanish thing that no event is an event unless it involves food.

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The intrepid duo eschewed the charms of the Hotel Victoria and the Hotel España and, purely by chance, of the three elegant, but faded, hotels on the site they chose the Hotel Balneario, the oldest hotel in the whole of Murcia. The hotel was built in 1860, luckily for Maggie she wasn’t there then or she’d have gone hungry because the restaurant wasn’t added till 1910. They were greeted enthusiastically by the waitress, a woman from Pinoso, who kissed them, announced to the whole restaurant that they were honorary Pinoseros and even introduced them to the cook besides remembering to serve them food and drink.

Much more like this on my own blog at Life in Culebrón

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