Last week I went on holiday to the Spanish island of Mallorca, which for me was unusual.

I am often assumed to be well-travelled. Presumably because of the languages and the years lived abroad, although perhaps the baggy-faced air of weariness gives the impression of more than my fair share of jet lag. Who knows.

Yet as it happens, travel has never really been my thing. It is not cheap for one thing, and I have never been much of an earner.

But it is not just that.

The impact of air travel on the environment concerns me. I try to live my life with awareness of the consequences from my decision-making, and travel for travel’s sake seems to step into the realm of “just because I can, does it really mean I should?” Looking at the damage mass-tourism has wrought around the world seems like another reason to avoid it. I’m sure many people would like to have their photo taken at Machu Picchu, on the Ponte di Rialto, swimming with dolphins, in front of an Egyptian pyramid, or with migrating wildebeest as a backdrop, but it is not actually a human right, and it often appears to be more of a human wrong.

But it is not just that.

Like many who move away, my holiday time over the years has primarily involved returning home to visit family. Since I moved back home (UK), our holiday time has instead involved returning to our previous home (Italy) and my husband’s original home (Romania) to visit family: leaving no time or funds for “proper” travelling.

But it is not just that either.

The reality is that I can’t bear holidays. Being herded through airports onto aeroplanes, and vice versa, is an increasingly grim experience. And if I survive that, I am never quite sure what to do when I get there. I can’t relax, I don’t enjoy beaches and I learn far more by reading or watching documentaries than I’ve ever done trailing around landmarks, trying to take pictures over other visitors’ shoulders. If a place speaks to me, the last thing I want is to superficially tourist my way around without getting to know it in any depth – I want to move there and live it. Which is more or less what I did for twenty-odd years, before becoming a married mother obliged me to embrace a less nomadic existence.

I am at peace with this part of myself, and with the knowledge that I will never visit “sights” universally raved about – I certainly don’t feel the sights I have touristically whistled past render me any more cultured, well-rounded, or wise.

But while being a married mother may mean I can no longer change my place of residence as and when I fancy, it also means that it was only a question of time before my non-holiday stance would be challenged by other members of my triangle family. That watershed came last year when my husband and I realised that we were no longer enjoying the pilgrimages back to our Italian village. While I breathed a sign of relief at one journey less, he instead declared his desire for us to instead take “proper holidays” elsewhere.

My initial reaction was “Ugh no, please not that” but as stubborn as I can be I recognised the need to at least consider the possibility, so negotiations began. They wanted a beach, I wanted to speak the language, and none of us thought we could cope with an entire week of leisure. So coastal Italy, France or Spain for three or four nights. He wanted Sardegna, but we would have had to sell a kidney each for the privilege, so it wasn’t to be. I mentioned Nice, but he vetoed it as being too close to our Italian relatives village.

Spain began to look like the more affordable option, especially when booking flights and hotel separately and we eventually settled on four days in Playa de Palma. The theory being that husband and daughter would frolic on the beach or by the pool, while I sipped café con leche and zumo natural in local bars and visited the book shops (a very important part of becoming a literary translator…).

Coinciding with being my first “proper holiday” destination in a very long time, Mallorca is also the place my travels began almost 30 years previously. And despite not even getting as far as Puerto Alcúdia, I took an emotional battering from the memories. So many memories, not just of events or people, but olfactory and auditory and sensory, hurtling me back into the psyche of that 18-year old womanchild living her first truly independent steps. The whole experience rendered even more poignant by the perplexed patience demonstrated by my own 10-year old daughter when faced with bouts of motherly tears, unexpected even by me.

To conclude:

While I never did find a bookshop, I did venture into the pool (an experience which gifted me a raging sinus infection).

We heard far more German spoken than we did Spanish or Mallorquín (still a vast improvement on monolingual English), but I found plenty of opportunities for nattering in the latter, to the embarrassment of my daughter who struggles with my public loquacity.

Other than a wonderful local bar in which we enjoyed pan tumaca for breakfast every morning as the only foreigners, we never did manage to find another non-touristy eatery.

As nice as it was to escape this ghastly British “summer”, all three of us found the July temperatures in Mallorca a little overpowering, and the volume of the summer tourism a little overwhelming.

I discovered that returning to old stomping grounds is immensely pleasurable. It enables me to relive my youth, and gives me the opportunity to speak the languages that bring me so much joy (as well as being a fundamental part of my work) thus effectively neutralising my dislike of holidays, offsetting my eco-guilt at the air miles and ever-so-slightly mollifying my distress at the cost.

My family discovered that as long as there is a beach, or a pool, endless supplies of ice-cream, and the opportunity to accompany me off the tourist path where possible, they are happy to revisit my old stomping grounds with me as part of their “proper” annual holiday. Compromise at its very best.

Although we will probably avoid the summer holidays from now on – May half-term has been touted as an alternative. We shall see!