Being on holiday, you don’t need to be anywhere, you don’t need to rush but there’s still something inside pushing you along. If you took me to paradise I’d say this is perfect, where are we going next? I’m kind of fidgety, maybe we’re all like that? If the moment is perfect you still feel the need to leave it, because a perfect moment is always in danger of being made imperfect by outside forces, or by going on too long. So we lie on the beach in Portinatx, we lie on the beach in Santa Eularia, looking at the sun kissed Mediterranean sea calling out to us, then swim in the clear Mediterranean water, looking back at the beach calling out to us to come and dry off on its warm sand.
We do a bit of Kayaking. On the beach waiting for the party before us to come back to shore, I’m worried I’m not going to be able to control the Kayak. There’s a woman stuck only a few metres out. If I get stuck I want to be way out to sea. OK, no-one will see me to rescue me but more importantly, they won’t be able to stare, point and laugh. A couple of Kayakers return to shore, we put the life jackets on, and off we go. We’re soon getting the hang of it - I think I was born to do this - the beach is far behind us, we’re out to sea and bobbing about, the sound of hollow plastic hitting against the water.
I go on a mountain bike expedition. There are three of us, Josh, who’s 16 and from Dundee, who I like, we met him when we were playing table tennis and he immediately offered us his ping pong stuff. He’s friendly and good mannered and enjoying his two weeks in the sun. I think if you’re 16 the hotel must be ideal. Then there’s our leader, Stephen, who’s Dutch, and has a habit of saying: ‘Don’t die Josh’, or ‘How many times did you die out there?’ We travel 11 kilometres, starting off fast downhill, the hills ahead of us, then off-road into the forest covering the red-brown ground before hitting rocky ground. The suspension on this bike is amazing, I wouldn’t want to try this on my bike back home. We stop off to look over the cliffs.
"It's beautiful up here, yes?" says Stephen, as we look at the twinkling blue ocean below.
Below in the bay he points out the ghostly shell of a hotel, all the brick work but nothing more. Apparently it was half built then it was discovered the building was illegal as its owners had no planning permission. So it stays there unfinished, haunting an otherwise perfect bay.
We carry on up to the lighthouse where we stare over the cliffs. There is a lot of glass here from parties and a rusty car lies smashed on the rocks below. Our guide takes us to a bar in Portinatx where I get a well deserved fresh orange. Josh is knackered and decides he’s deserved a pint of San Miguel. Oh to be young again.
The guides like giving orders. Stephen guides us across the rocks telling us the best way to ride the bike, how to use the breaks, how to use the gears. When we finish for the morning, he’s still giving advice.
“OK, get a shower or take a dip in the pool.”
Slightly patronising, especially as I’ve been supervising my own showers since I was 34. But the guy’s OK, he’s got an interesting job; taking people out Kayaking and mountain biking, resting up in the afternoon and performing the shows in the evening, it beats the real world.
The real world, our real world is calling us. An evening in the Zulu lounge restaurant; drinking wine, watching the lights of the yachts in the bay, listening to the sea on the shore. A last day in the sun, schools of fish swimming around us and bumping into our feet. We’ll take these memories back with us, back to the English autumn.
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