The warmest of welcomes at Spain’s Costa Calida

The Costa Calida may not be the most well-known of the Spanish costas – Brava, Blanca and Sol would beat it hands down in a vox pop – but it might well be the most welcoming.

Calida means warm - and that goes for both the welcome and the temperature as Murcia enjoys more than 320 days of sunshine a year.

You won’t need an umbrella or an extra layer in case it gets chilly, but you might want to pack your hiking shoes to enjoy the area’s terracotta cliffs and aquamarine seas as well as your most forgiving trousers to accommodate the food.

Surprisingly the local people don’t want to keep all this bounty to themselves - they want to share it with tourists.

And they’ve spent millions on a brand new airport to do just that.

Murcia’s multi-million pound airport, which opened its runways in January, has flights from across the UK and jetting out from Stansted, you land at the shiny new Region de Murcia International Airport in two hours and 45 minutes.

The region of Murcia, which has the city of Murcia as its capital, is in the south east of Spain, sandwiched between Andalusia, Castile – La Mancha, Valencia and the Mediterranean.

The area has none of the worst bits of its coastal rivals – all day Full English fry-ups and burnt Brit tourists – but is packed full of history, culture, watersports and sumptuous food.