I have never been so relieved to see a set of keys in a plastic box as I was when we finally rocked up to our little place in Torrevieja. The journey from Valencia airport had started with such promise: hire car gleaming in the Spanish sun, playlist queued, snacks abundant. Then I confidently led us to the wrong apartment complex entirely, marching up to a locked gate three streets away with the misplaced swagger of someone who definitely had not checked the address properly. My partner's face as I rattled that gate was a masterclass in suppressed British irritation. Twenty minutes of sulking and a very sheepish phone call later, we found the actual property, tucked down a quiet residential street where actual human beings lived actual peaceful lives, bless them.

The first thing that hit me, after the embarrassment subsided, was the smell. Warm stone, distant sea salt, and something floral I could not identify then and still cannot now. Our terrace became my immediate obsession. Small, tiled, with a couple of chairs that looked like they had witnessed decades of holidaymakers making the exact same decision I was about to make. I sat. I stayed. The sun did its magnificent thing, and I understood with sudden clarity that this was precisely what I had come for.

Torrevieja does not demand much of you, which is its genius. The first few days blurred into a rhythm so gentle it barely qualified as rhythm at all. Morning coffee on that terrace, watching the neighbourhood emerge. A slow wander to the nearest shop for bread and whatever looked promising. Back for reading, actual physical books, pages turning in warm air while somewhere in the distance a dog barked lazily and children shrieked with the particular energy of people not yet burdened by the concept of productivity.

I had brought a stack of novels I had been meaning to read since approximately 2019. Here, finally, they got their moment. Something about the light, I think, or the complete absence of anywhere I genuinely needed to be. I would read until my eyes felt heavy, then drift into a doze so shallow I could still hear the world going about its business. Waking from those naps felt like being let in on a secret. The sun had moved, shadows had shifted, and nobody had needed me for anything.

The local beaches crept into our routine almost without discussion. Not the famous stretches that draw coach trips, but smaller coves where Spanish families set up for the day with proper equipment and serious intent. We would arrive late morning, find a spot, and simply exist. The Mediterranean does something to your nervous system if you let it. I paddled like a child, let salt dry on my skin, collected stones I would later abandon at the airport because apparently I do not learn from previous holidays.

Evenings meant simple meals cobbled together from whatever we had gathered, eaten on that terrace as the heat softened and the sky turned colours no camera ever quite captures. We talked more than usual, my partner and I, about nothing particularly important. The kind of meandering conversation that only happens when nobody is checking a clock.

I think what struck me most, looking back, was how quickly I stopped feeling guilty about the nothingness. At home, stillness feels like failure. Here, it felt like the entire point. I watched an ant carry something improbably large across a tile for what must have been ten minutes. I counted boats. I finished books and immediately forgot the plots, which somehow did not matter at all.

On our last morning, I sat on that terrace with my final coffee and felt something unfamiliar settle over me. Not quite sadness at leaving, more a recognition that I had accidentally stumbled onto something I needed. The wrong gate, the sheepish phone call, the sun-drenched nothingness of it all. I had come to Valencia expecting Spain, and found instead a version of myself who could simply sit still and call it enough.