We left you with arriving in Spain and eventually being let into the country. We then picked up a hire car from okmobility (which we know does sound like some sort of mobility scheme and that we were going to hire five electric scooters, but they are a very good car firm, they just have a terrible name). We were staying about 50 km north-west of Barcelona and after stopping for a bite of lunch on the way, arrived around 5 ish to be met by our hosts.

The property is an old bakery, but it looks as though it was also a Mill. It’s over three floors, and it’s actually two separate apartments on the upper two floors with communal facilities on the ground. So the larger middle apartment has five bedrooms, and would have been perfect for us and the boys when they arrive, but they only seem to hire out the whole house, so we have access to the upstairs apartment as well. It’s a sort of buy 10 beds get 4 free.

The lady who showed us around was called Montserrat (yes as in Caballé. Yes, as in the one that sang Barcelona. No, the irony of this is not lost on us). We entered the property through a little hobbit door in a large gate into a dark hallway with doors off to the left and right

We were guided to the left side of the building. Of course we had seen many pictures of this place on the website so we thought we knew what to expect.

The first room on the tour was the laundry room. Not the place that you normally start but we looked at the two washing machines and tumble dryer and nodded our approval and I’m sure probably said “oh very nice”. This is not normal behaviour when you see a washing machine but we were just trying to be polite.

She then opened another door to another room. This was lit by fluorescent lights and had a selection of IKEA furniture around the side. To be honest, we had never seen this picture on the website. In the middle of the room was a child’s table football. From the pictures on the website we knew there was a games room with a pool table and table football (or foosball or baby Foot or whatever you want to call it). However, this was definitely a “Fisher Price, my first Foosball”. We were starting to get a little nervous as to whether this really was the property that we’d seen.

Next she took us through into the garage. Again, when showing somebody around the house you don’t often lead with the garage. It was a very spacious garage. We saw 10 bikes. We saw a freezer so large that you could put a dead body in it. We saw many cupboards and shelves full with….well the normal rubbish that you find in a garage. All the time this tour is going on Rachel and Tibu are chatting away to her in Spanish and the three of us are following along, politely nodding, smiling at an off-cut of garden hose shoved in a cardboard box on the top of a shelf.

We then retraced our steps and ended up back at the hallway. She opened the door to the right into another little corridor and slid back the door to reveal…the disabled toilet. This was a very spacious room with a toilet in the corner with all the requisite handrails. We have now renamed these “Rachel rails” due to her aged years. I say “we”, I actually mean “me”; the others are far too respectful to their elders to make such cheap jibes. It was a very spacious wet room, complete with a fold down seat in the shower. Again, not really a wow-factor room but practical.

Eventually, we find ourselves by the pool.

This place has two pools; an indoor and an outdoor one. The outdoor one is a seawater pool, but as we are 50 km away from the sea, I think it’s just a freshwater pool and somebody chucked a tub of Saxa salt in it.

From this point on things improved. We think she must’ve been a fan of Grand Designs and had taken us on the boring rubbish bits first, knowing that we would just stick with it to see the best bits. You know what happens, Kevin McCloud goes to a property and talks about how the exterior cladding will weather (i.e. rot) in keeping with its surroundings (i.e. fields. They always build these great big houses in fields) or marvel at the zinc titanium roof when all you want to do is see how they’ve managed to turn this deserted nuclear bunker into something cosy and habitable.

She then showed us the rest of the villa which is absolutely stunning. There was one feature which we have never had any anywhere before, which is a lift. We did wonder if it’s one of those lost in translation descriptions and perhaps we were going to have a dumbwaiter, but this was a passenger lift that goes between all three floors.

Again when we went to one of the bedrooms we were told that this was the one with the wheelchair access to the shower. And indeed the ensuite is very similar to the one downstairs with a big wet room and Rachel rails around the toilet. We think that when they don’t hire this place out, it’s possibly lived in by the family and they may have a relative who is a wheelchair user, because we suddenly began spotting little oddities.

Every step outside has a ramp. The saltwater pool actually has a Rachel rail the full length of it (but to be honest with you it is quite deep. We haven’t let Karen go in as she will probably drown).

Suddenly we realised….we had inadvertently booked ourselves into a five star retirement home.

Oh the irony.