You don’t need to be working to enjoy a break

It’s funny how easy it is to get out of some habits, and how hard to get into others.

I’m talking about habits, mind, and not addictions. Habits like packing for trips, something I used to do most weeks and had got down to a fine art. Not just clothes, not just toiletries, not just papers, but phone charger, computer charger, plug adaptors, all the things that small differences between countries make necessary.

That effort was just so I could attend meetings which, I only realised after I’d stopped, it had become an effort to approach with enthusiasm. Even after 35 years, I hadn’t grasped that I’d had enough. Or perhaps after 35 years, it had become so habitual, I’d stopped noticing how monotonous it had become.

Then, with the assistance of redundancy and retirement, I lost that habit. So when I packed last week, I had to remind myself consciously of every item I was taking. And, even then, I left without my wallet or any kind of personal documentation. We live in Spain and I do find that I have to be able to prove who I am from time to time, so having no papers might have been a problem. It wasn’t, though, up in the mountains where we went, far from any great population centres or any of our fine bureaucratic institutions.

So how about the habit I haven’t yet learned? That’s holidays while retired. It wasn’t my first, but it still feels strange to go on holiday when I’m not actually taking a break from work. And even stranger, though certainly very pleasant, to come back from holiday without feeling I have to start work again the next day. Odd, but I suspect I’ll get used to it fairly soon. Come to think of it, I hope you too get the chance to develop that habit in the not too distant future.

Jérica from our room in the ‘Sharíqa’ B&B opposite

The place we went to is called Jérica and, like so many fine towns in Spain, it owes its origins to the Arabs that ran most of the country for seven centuries. What a power they then were, expansive, dynamic, open. They could rule over an essentially Christian population without persecuting it, they could work hand in glove with the Jews without tormenting them, they could absorb culture and add to it in many spectacular and exciting ways. All that went when, from the twelfth century onwards, inward-looking bigots began to take power in western Islam, and were then overrun by a terrible, obscurantist Christianity that, after a brief moment of glory as a world power, condemned Spain to decline and pain.

We stayed in a wonderful bed and breakfast house on the hillside opposite the town. It was called ‘Sharíqa’, a reasonable transliteration of the town’s Arabic name, from a word possibly meaning ‘eastern slope of the mountain’, which sounds like a really dull and implausible name to give the town, or possibly ‘castle of the sheriffs’, which sounds much more likely. Especially since the town is crowned by a castle.

Of course, the name just made me think of Jericho. So it was with a sense of aptness that I found the town walls had indeed come tumbling down.

Jérica: and the walls came tumbling down

It’s built on a high bluff, surrounded on three sides by the river Palancia, including some attractive weirs as the river reaches the town. Indeed, that was one of the things that we particularly enjoyed during this trip: everywhere we went, we heard the sound of running water, with anything from irrigation channels, to streams to rivers everywhere we went. That’s not so common in Spain.

A weir at the entry of the river Palancia to the town of Jérica

Indeed, one aspect of the trip that was marginally disappointing was that the weather tended towards the English. A lot of grey. Cool temperatures verging on the downright cold. Even outbreaks of drizzling rain, though not generally for quite as long as we learned to enjoy in England (for some value of the word ‘enjoy’). Why, at one point, we even found ourselves caught in fog.

That reminded me of an acquaintance I once made in the English Lake District. 

‘People always complain to me about the rain up here,’ he told me, ‘but I keep saying, it’s the Lake District. What do you think those lakes are full of?’

Anyway, we’d taken bikes with us (electric ones, I’m glad to say, so cycling in the mountains became a pleasure rather than a back-breaking chore), and cool weather was a lot more pleasurable than heat would have been (even with a motor to help, cycling can be hot work at times, up there in the hills).

The bikes meant that we got to see a lot more than just Jérica. Certainly, the town wasn’t by any means the only sources of striking or beautiful sights we came across, to say nothing of a few frankly weird ones. 

One of the weirder sights: a congress of cairns

A stream near Viver, the next town to Jérica

We rode mostly along the ‘Vías verdes de ojos negros’ which translates, a little literally, as ‘black eyes greenway’. I’m glad to say we neither gave each other black eyes, nor suffered any in accidents. The track mostly follows the route of an old railway line, which means the slopes aren’t bad, and you get some great bridges and tunnels along the way.

Quite a striking pine. And a fine bridge on the Ojos Negros

Some of the tunnels are impressive

There's also a lot of bird watching to do, if that’s your thing. It’s certainly Danielle’s, and she got some great photos. Incidentally, she calls that pastime ‘shooting birds’, though I felt that was a somewhat misleading, or at least ambiguous, term for her innocent hobby. The high point was a series of pictures of bee-catchers* and, though I thought bees needed all the protection they could get these days, apparently seeing bee-catchers is one heck of a thing for a bird watcher (at least in Europe). 

Danielle with her camera, ‘shooting’ her birds

Personally, I just see dots flying across the sky, but Danielle’s getting really good at this stuff, and will call out things like, ‘look, look! A lesser black-backed whippersnapper’, where I only see a little smudge of grey. I’m frankly impressed.

It was a fine short break away. Not necessarily all that relaxing, given all the cycling, electric motor or not. Still a break, though, and no worse for not being a break from work or ending with a return to it.

In fact, I reckon in time I could get used to that kind of thing.

* Since I first published this piece, a good friend pointed out to me that I might have meant bee-eaters, not bee-catchers. She was entirely right. Note to self: work on your ornithology.