The Jardines del Turia are in the former river bed of the River Turia. The river used to flood regularly, and after a particularly bad flood in 1957 approval was given for the river to be diverted away from the city centre to the south of the city.

Since then, the 7km long river bed has been transformed into a mixture of playing fields, cycling and walking paths, and gardens. I was very pleasantly surprised at the quality of the parks in the dried up river bed. We walked south from the two towers of Torres de Serranos towards the city of Art and Science.

I had expected monotonous poorly kept drought scared patches of vegetation along dusty paths. What I found was a themed green landscape park land. Each section of land between either side of the bridge was different to the next section.

The Moorish influence in Spanish Architecture has been mirrored in the water features. If you go to the Alhambra Palace in Granada or visit the merchant houses of Rhonda you will see the same style of fountains in square pools and tiled gullies of water connecting each one.

Each section of the park has different planting schemes. One will be filled with orange trees, the next will have olive trees or a different flowering tree. What I did like was that some of the older more attractive bridges were surrounded by a lake of water to give the appearance they were spanning a river. At the weekend you may see rock climbers trying to traverse the bridges

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