Vejer was still asleep when we left.
Not dramatically asleep. Just shutters half-down, streets quiet enough that you notice your own footsteps when you take the rubbish out. We’d slept better than we had in days, which should have made the morning lighter, but somehow it didn’t. When something finally works, you’re reluctant to disturb it.
We had coffee without talking much. No plan written down. No place circled. Just a loose agreement that we’d start heading away from the coast and see how it felt.
Those are the days that sound simple until you’re in them.
The first hour was easy. Empty roads, soft light, the van behaving itself. I drove. Mary watched the landscape change slowly, fields opening out, then olive trees, then more olive trees. The radio went on, then off again. I mentioned fuel. She nodded at a lorry that did something daft.
Somewhere after the second service station, the drive stopped feeling like a transition and started feeling like effort.
We pulled in once, got out, stretched, looked around, and both knew we weren’t staying. Nothing wrong with it. Just not somewhere we wanted to stop. Back in the van. Doors shut. Engine on. We did it again an hour later.
On days like that you start noticing different things. Every noise. Every vibration. I became convinced one of the cupboard latches sounded different. Mary went quiet, not in a worrying way, just inward. The way she gets when she’s taking things in rather than reacting to them.
We talked about practical stuff instead. Fuel prices. Road signs. Whether it was worth pushing on or calling it early. That’s usually how we know we’re tired.
By mid-afternoon, places blurred into categories instead of names. Hills. Flat stretches. Towns we didn’t bother identifying. We passed exits that looked promising and ignored them. We took one we shouldn’t have, drove through somewhere perfectly fine, and carried on anyway.
There’s a heaviness that creeps in when you’ve been moving too long without properly arriving. Not dramatic. Just dull. Like everything’s running on low power to save energy.
Later, the light stretched out and softened. Shadows got longer. Traffic thinned again. I suggested stopping somewhere unremarkable. Mary agreed straight away, which told me everything.
We pulled into a spot that wasn’t pretty but felt okay. Flat. Quiet. No obvious signs telling us we shouldn’t be there, which now counts as success. The van settled. The engine ticked as it cooled. That cupboard latch sounded exactly the same as it always had.
Dinner was basic. Something heated. Something crunchy. No photos. No notes.
We didn’t really talk about tomorrow. Just the usual checks. Doors. Water. Alarm. A brief comment about how still it was.
It was dark by the time we turned the lights off.
Some days are just long.
