Sadly this is the last day of my holiday, back to work on Monday.

I spent my last night in France, checked out of my hotel, bought some pastries for breakfast and spent the day walking around Perpignan, the sun was out, it’s an attractive city; but with no guide book though I was sort of wondering about aimlessly. I checked up on 43places and Wikipedia, but there wasn’t much listed about the town, popped my head into another gloomy church. I kept saying things in Spanish rather than French, I missed the place already.

My flight home left in the afternoon, it was a flight where you sit where you like. I grabbed the best seat on the plane, window seat, right at the front, lots of leg room, first off the plane, the flight back was pleasant too, no clouds in the sky, I spotted us going over the Isle of Wight. Finally got home at 9:24pm.

While on holiday, I’ve been reading South from Granada by Gerald Brenan, it’s a great book about Andalucia rural life before the Spanish Civil war. In the preface written in 1953, he spoke about Spain’s character:

...No one is going to find in Spain a model country like Sweden or Switzerland, conditioned by rhythm of it’s machines, but on the contrary one which has up to now insisted on preserving a certain modicum of anarchy and non-compliance. How long this is going to continue I can not say, but it is still true that south of the Pyrenees one finds a society which puts the deeper needs of human nature before the technical organization that is required to provide a higher standard of living. This is a land that nourishes at the same time the sense for poetry and the sense for reality, and neither of these accords with the utilitarian outlook.

I believe the Spain that he describes still exists and I’m happy to have witnessed a bit of it. What I’ve experienced over the last two weeks has been emotional, the memories have become a part of me…

Not yet sure when the next part of the journey will be, but it’ll be back to France and then on to Italy.

Lastly, thank you for reading my thoughts as I went, it’s been good knowing you’re there, your comments and cheers have been welcome company.