Away in Spain

I have been away in Spain, staying in a hillside village a few miles from the coast, something I can recommend to almost everybody.

Since I have been back I have read of a number of football teams that have gone to Spain for some warm weather training. Ha! I went for warm weather non-training. The days involved breakfast, wandering around, lunch as the main meal of the day, reading, more wandering around, supper. No television, radio, or any form of media distraction.

I am always striving to strip things back but never succeed as I have an immense capacity to decide something and then instinctively act in a completely different way. On holiday simplicity was achieved but it was only that - a holiday. The complicated bit is working out day-to-day pattern of living. However the holiday provided an inoculation of sunshine against the gloom of an English February and that is an unalloyed good.

Although there was no running I reckon there was a goodly amount of base training. The walking was all up and down hills and our cottage was at the top of these 50 leg-strengthening steps. However I have to admit that the truly committed would have been running up and down the steps every morning – ah well!