There's no place like home

I 've al­ways wanted to see India, and visit the jun­gle-bound pyra­mids of South Amer­ica. I've al­ways imag­ined strid­ing across Red Square or surf­ing at Bondi Beach. Yet, as 50 ap­proaches, I re­alise I have done none of those things, and with few sav­ings, a mort­gage and a fam­ily, I doubt I ever will.

Yet, strangely, I don't mind so much. I find I do not be­moan my lot or feel the re­gret of wasted op­por­tu­ni­ties as mid­dle age slowly tight­ens its grip. Con­sid­er­ing this while edit­ing our se­lec­tion of out­ings around Cat­alo­nia that you can find on pages 23-33, I came to the re­al­i­sa­tion that the cul­tural and nat­ural riches of the coun­try I now call home is a com­pen­sat­ing fac­tor.

Grow­ing up in a work­ing class area of an eco­nom­i­cally de­pressed Liv­er­pool (cue the vi­o­lins!), hol­i­days abroad were not re­ally an op­tion. Along with most of the neigh­bours, our fam­ily hol­i­days were lim­ited to a week in a local But­lin's hol­i­day camp or days-out. Nat­u­rally, the North West of Eng­land has its at­trac­tions like any­where else, but with­out a car and at a time when tourism was not as de­vel­oped as it is today, our op­tions were few.

I re­alise things are dif­fer­ent for my mod­ern-day equiv­a­lent, now that low-cost travel and af­ford­able on­line pack­ages have made ex­otic travel more ac­ces­si­ble. Yet, if you have to stay­ing near home in the sum­mer­time, you could not pick a much bet­ter place than Cat­alo­nia.

Going on hol­i­day in this coun­try (some­thing I've done for the past few years) never seems like a com­pro­mise. As you can see from our se­lec­tion of trips, Cat­alo­nia of­fers the hol­i­day­maker a lot of every­thing, from moun­tains and beaches, to vol­ca­noes and abbeys, from wet­lands and arid plains, to pre­his­toric land­marks and theme parks. When the sum­mer comes around and you re­alise that this year you don't have the money, or the time, or the en­ergy to visit the Rocky Moun­tains or the Caribbean, it puts the mind at rest to know that Cat­alo­nia has a wealth of at­trac­tions right on your doorstep.

Last sum­mer I biked in the Pyre­nees, criss-cross­ing the moun­tains as we de­scended to the coast for an hour's sun­bathing be­fore tuck­ing into a de­li­cious paella on the seafront. The year be­fore I went bird­watch­ing in the Delta and ate roasted eel for the first time. On a city walk­ing tour I learnt all about Roman Barcelona, while in the evening an ex­pert plied me with the best local wines in Pri­o­rat. Trav­el­ling to new places and ex­pe­ri­enc­ing new cul­tures is among the best things in life. But, stay­ing at home ain't so bad ei­ther.