Fortuna

The bread van toots its horn at exactly half past eight. By twenty to nine, British motor-homers in dressing-gowns shuffle across the gravel of Camping La Fuente clutching coins for still-warm churros. Fortuna’s day begins beside the thermal pool, steam rising like a kettle left on boil while the surrounding hills glow ochre in the early sun. This is inland Spain at 192 m above sea level—high enough to knock the edge off the Murcian summer, low enough that winter midday lunches can still be eaten outside.

Water That Burned Roman Legs

The springs were already famous when Hadrian’s engineers slapped down mosaic floors around the pools. Today the modern Balneario de Fortuna keeps the temperature at a steady 35 °C in the outdoor pool, 50 °C at the source. A day pass is €12 and you’ll need your own towel; the changing rooms are clean but coin-lockers swallow a one-euro piece you never get back. Arthritis sufferers from Bremen to Blackburn swear by the sulphur-tinged water, spending January to March doing daily laps while northern Europe freezes. The pool complex shuts on Monday and Tuesday outside school holidays—turn up on a Wednesday to watch the German-language aqua-aerobics class that somehow materialised in rural Murcia.

Three kilometres uphill from the spa, the original Roman Baths survive as a fenced-off rectangle of stone the size of a tennis court. Interpretation boards are only in Spanish, but the message is clear: soldiers posted to this dusty basin knew a good soak when they found one.

A Town That Clings to the Slope

Fortuna’s high street tilts at an angle that would shame Sheffield. Park at the bottom near the health centre; the top end is a dead-end where Saturday’s market stalls leave centimetres between bumper and bumper. The church of Nuestra Señora de la Purísima squats on a ridge of its own, neoclassical façade the colour of old ivory, bells that ring the quarter-hour across a lattice of alleyways barely two metres wide. Walk uphill for five minutes and the temperature drops three degrees; walk back down and the smell of orange blossom hits before you reach the square.

There is no cathedral, no selfie-stick queue, just the Casino Fortunense—a 1903 social club with velvet curtains and a billiard table older than the Queen—where visitors are welcomed if they wipe their feet. Ask inside for the key to the viewing gallery above the stage; a volunteer will appear with a brass key the length of a forearm and a story about the night the town band played until the Civil Guard shut them down.

When the Irrigation Channels Sing

Below the houses, the plain spreads out in a chessboard of lemon groves and lettuce plots fed by channels the Arabs dug a thousand years ago. Drive the RM-522 towards El Zacatín at sunset and water glints in every ditch, turning the desert air almost English-green. Stop at the roadside stall with hand-painted sign “Limones 1 €/kg”; the farmer will have change even if you only have a twenty.

Fortuna’s Saturday market is the weekly pulse. Stallholders arrive from Murcia city with plastic tablecloths, sell knock-off Barcelona shirts next to ladies shifting home-grown onions, and pack up by two o’clock sharp. Arrive before eleven or you’ll queue twenty minutes to enter the ring-road roundabout, camper vans snagging on almond trees. The pastel de carne stall halfway down the hill does a pasty-shaped pie of spiced pork and hard-boiled egg—safe lunch for children who think foreign food equals danger.

Walking Tracks and What the Maps Miss

Behind the town the Sierra de la Pila climbs to 1,247 m, high enough for snow two or three winter nights a year. The regional park office in town hands out free leaflets marking three signposted routes; the easiest, PR-MU 14, starts at the picnic site 8 km north of Fortuna and loops 6 km through rosemary-scented scrub. Ignore the brochure altitude profile—it omits the 200 m pull at the end that leaves British thighs questioning holiday choices. Take the unmarked fork left at kilometre 4 and you’ll reach a stone shelter where Spanish weekenders barbecue sausages; they’ll wave you over to share a glass of Jumilla red that tastes like blackberries and costs €2 a bottle in the coop.

The summit trail to La Pila proper is a different proposition: 12 km return, 600 m of ascent, no shade. Start at seven in summer or fry. In January the same path can be done in trainers, but carry a jacket—the temperature at the top can be 8 °C cooler than by the pool. The 360-degree view shows Murcia’s citrus belt stretching to the Mar Menor, a silver wedge on the horizon that reminds you the sea is only 45 minutes away.

Eating Without the Coastal Mark-Up

Fortuna restaurants still price menus for locals. Bar Cristóbal on Calón serves a three-course lunch with wine for €11; the lamb stew arrives in an earthenware bowl big enough for two, its gravy mild and thickened with potato. Evening tapas means the same square footage of bar counter fills with builders still dusty from the greenhouse, councillors in linen jackets, and the odd British couple who followed Google Maps to “best tapas near me”. Order the zarangollo—scrambled egg with onion and courgette—then the sequillos, almond biscuits sold by weight from a glass jar. The barman will write your tally in chalk on the counter; settle up when you leave.

Vegetarians struggle. One menu del día option is usually “ensalada mixta”, code for iceberg and tinned tuna. Ask for “sin atún” and you’ll get a shrug and extra egg. Bring a phrasebook or prepare to embrace dairy.

Seasons of Steam and Silence

April and October are the sweet spots: daytime 24 °C, nights cool enough for sleep, almond blossom or autumn colour depending on the month. July and August bake; the spa pool feels like a lukewarm bath and the town’s population halves as locals flee to the beach. Christmas brings British pensioners in mohair hats who colonise the campsite washing machines; New Year’s Eve fireworks echo off the sierra like gunfire. January mornings can start at 2 °C—pack gloves for the bread-van dash—but by eleven you’re in shirtsleeves beside the pool again.

Rain is sudden and brief. A September storm once dropped 60 mm in an hour, turning the main street into a chocolate-brown torrent that swept away market stalls. Two hours later the only evidence was steam rising from tarmac and flip-flops abandoned in drains.

Getting There, Getting Out

Murcia-Corvera airport is 40 minutes by hire car; Alicante is 75. There is no train, and the Monday-to-Friday bus from Murcia city has two return services aimed at pensioners with medical appointments. Car essential, then—book early in winter when every Nordic over-60 wants wheels. Fuel on the A-30 is cheaper than the village Repsol; top up before you leave the motorway.

Leave space in the boot for a five-litre can of extra-virgin olive oil sold from a garage on the RM-422; the farmer’s wife fills it from a steel tank while you wait, €18 cash only. It will leak slightly on the flight home, but salad dressings for the rest of the year taste of Fortuna mornings: hot sun, cold water, and the faint whiff of sulphur that says the earth here is still alive.