Dog Walkers in Murcia, Spain

Murcia is not exactly one city: it is an urban core surrounded by more than fifty pedanías — outlying districts that function almost as villages in their own right. La Alberca, Espinardo, Sangonera or Puente Tocinos each have their own life and their own distances, and that matters a great deal when organising pet care. A walker covering the centre and one covering the southern pedanías work in different realities: the first moves on foot between El Carmen and Vistalegre, the second needs a car and plans longer routes with fewer stops.

The climate is the other constraint, and it is severe. This is one of the driest and hottest corners of western Europe, with summers comfortably clearing forty degrees and very low annual rainfall. July and August impose a strict dawn-and-night regime, and in August it is common for local sitters to concentrate all the exercise into the first hour of light. In exchange, winter is so benign that you can walk at any hour of the day almost without exception.

The huerta is the advantage this city holds that almost nobody outside it knows. The paths between irrigation channels and terraced plots that ring the urban core form a huge network of flat ground, soft underfoot and shaded by citrus trees, minutes from the centre. For a dog, half an hour on a huerta track delivers far more than the same half hour on a pavement.

Within the city, the axis of the Segura organises the walking. The river is channelled and landscaped along its urban stretch, and the Jardín del Malecón, with its raised promenade along the old flood wall, is probably the most reliably shaded route in Murcia through the difficult months.