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After months and months of lock­downs and mo­bil­ity re­stric­tions due to the coro­n­avirus pan­demic, this year it seems as if sum­mer hol­i­days are back on the table, al­beit in a still lim­ited form. Last sum­mer we looked at the sit­u­a­tion and de­cided to give our an­nual hol­i­day a miss - it just seemed like more trou­ble than it was worth.

For­tu­nately my wife doesn’t read this col­umn so I can openly admit that it was ac­tu­ally a bit of a re­lief. Of course it’s im­por­tant to get a change of scenery, to spend some qual­ity time with the fam­ily and to see new places, but as we all know hol­i­days can also be quite stress­ful and ex­pen­sive.

I still bear the scars of those camp­ing hol­i­days when on ar­riv­ing at the plot, the wife and kids would bug­ger off to the swim­ming pool, leav­ing me with my hands on hips star­ing at the car over­flow­ing with equip­ment and won­der­ing where to start.

Mean­while, I still have night­mares about that day when, hav­ing al­ready spent two hours in the air­port with two small chil­dren who were quickly grow­ing bored, the air­line an­nounced that there was a tech­ni­cal prob­lem and we wouldn’t be able to board for an­other five hours.

With those types of mem­o­ries in my mind, and given all the ner­vous­ness sur­round­ing the pan­demic, I was quite con­tent last year to stay at home and ded­i­cate some se­ri­ous time to the ham­mock and a good book. An­other ad­van­tage of skip­ping a year is that this sum­mer I re­ally am look­ing for­ward to get­ting out there and shak­ing off the cob­webs I’ve ac­cu­mu­lated over months of stay­ing at home.

So, what am I look­ing for in a sum­mer hol­i­day ex­actly? Well, a des­ti­na­tion that of­fers a num­ber of dif­fer­ent op­tions would be best, some­where with coun­try­side and moun­tains for walk­ing, maybe with a beach not too far away so I can work on my tan. Good food is a must on hol­i­day, and if I can eat out­side in the open air in the evenings, that would be great. While laz­ing around is one of my main ob­jec­tives when on hol­i­day, it’s also nice to go on a few cul­tural vis­its, maybe to a cas­tle or a mu­seum. In my case, I’ve al­ways liked a bit of bird­watch­ing - yes, sad I know - so if there are any nat­ural parks around then count me in. It also needs to be a des­ti­na­tion that is af­ford­able, and for me, rel­a­tively easy to get to and to get around.

I put all that data into my com­puter and hit ’enter’. While there are a num­ber of des­ti­na­tions around the world that fit the de­scrip­tion, one stands out: Cat­alo­nia.

I hope you had a look at the se­ries of itin­er­aries and routes in Cat­alo­nia we fea­ture in this mag­a­zine on pages 18 to 31. It may be just a small se­lec­tion of places to visit in Cat­alo­nia but it cer­tainly gives an idea of the sheer range of op­tions there are in this coun­try when it comes to hol­i­day­ing. There’s a rea­son why mil­lions of for­eign tourists choose to spend their sum­mer hol­i­days here every year.

And an­other thing is de­cid­ing to hol­i­day closer to home this sum­mer has an added ad­van­tage: there is ab­solutely no chance of hav­ing to spend seven hours in an air­port with two small chil­dren!