A day of rain

It was raining all last night and it carried on raining all of today. I started out cheerfully enough but as the day wore on I got more and more cold and wet and more and more tired and fed up. I was passing through some beautiful scenery - massive red sandstone lumps of rock rising up on my left and pine forests all around. As I climbed higher the rain turned to snow, then rain again as I came down the other side of the mountain.
A reservoir appeared in front of me, lie in spite of the lowering grey of the sky above. I walked over the dam and through tunnels taking advantage of the short respite from the rain to take a picture of the water.
The route carried on over more hills and through orchards of pink and white white blossom. No people to be seen anywhere. Water was cascading down the mountain sides everywhere and more than once I had to ford swollen streams.
By now I was pretty wet in spite of my top quality waterproof jacket (£25 from tk maxx). The red sandstone have way in places to white clay which stuck to my boots and made its way up my trousers.
I started climbing the final Jill before Cieza at about 4:30 and descended down a zig-zag path (actually called that on the map) into Cieza at 6:00.
I hardly felt a fit resident of the hotel (see picture) which is very stylish (an c18th palace I think).
I've spent the whole of the evening washing and trying to dry things out. Everything was soaked through and probably will be tomorrow.