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An unruly rabble bursts on to the street: a noisy eruption, bubbling towards us. This isn’t closing time on the Croisette in Cannes. A flock of sheep bustles past our cottage towards the shade of a huge chestnut tree, driven by three generations of herders and their dogs. The waterlike cacophony of their bells slows until only the odd tink tink punctuates the cicadas’ hum. The sheep graze, the shepherds doze off, and the mountain hamlet is still again.

My partner and I had set off by Eurostar less than 24 hours before, yet this place felt a world away from the ad agency where I work.

We’d booked cheap tickets to Paris months ago, intending to plan a trip on from there by train. As our departure approached, Instagram seemed to be full of aspirational, yet similar, holiday photos, and almost every other TikTok post I flicked past offered the promise of a hidden destination … discovered.

I find ratings, reviews and recommendations just as reassuring as the next person, especially when faced with a limited holiday allowance. The safety of the search bar helps to give me the confidence that I’m spending my hard earned money as wisely as possible. I work in a world that runs on data and optimisation and I love it, but I wondered whether I’d optimised the adventure out of my own holidays.

So, we tried a simple experiment. We closed down the tabs and opened a map of western Europe. Embracing a bit of low-tech randomness, we chose to let chance decide our trip.

I shut my eyes and we promised to go wherever my finger landed. I waved my hand like a magic wand and pointed, then took a deep breath, eyes still closed. What if we ended up in some industrial wasteland? But we were in luck. My finger landed upon the commune of Saint-Hilaire-de-Lavit in Cévennes, a place we’d never heard of and almost certainly would never have found by searching “places to go in France”.

After overnighting in Paris, a three-hour fast train zipped us down to Montpellier, where we hired a car. We stopped for provisions in a Lidl on the edge of town, stocking up for the whole trip – we weren’t expecting to find any shops at our journey’s end. A short drive inland, and the roads began to get narrower and more sparsely populated. As they climbed and zigzagged into this south-east corner of the Massif Central, we entered a south of France far removed from the honeypots served up by algorithms.

We pulled into a grassy layby on a high mountain pass where there was one other car parked. Had we arrived? We’d followed the cottage owner’s directions as there was no signal here for Google Maps, so it was hard to tell. Stretching our legs in the fresh, cool air, the first thing we noticed was the quiet. No traffic, no tourists. Just stillness. But the languid buzz of big insects flying by and the whirring chorus of cicadas told us this place was alive.

Squinting into the low sun, we saw someone waving. Our host, Guilaine, had appeared as if by magic and was beckoning us to the cottage a little farther down the road. We had found the hamlet of Les Ayres: a cluster of maybe 10 stone buildings, 800 metres above sea level. The rough-walled dwellings huddled either side of the narrow road, making the most of the tiny strand of level ground before the mountain’s spine fell away into steep forest. A long wooden awning and some outdoor tables suggested a cafe opposite our cottage, but the building was shuttered, and Les Ayres’ only potential customers seemed to be ourselves and Guilaine. She took us to the back of our accommodation, to a veranda that looked out over chestnut and pine-clad mountains rolling into the horizon. It’s a landscape that appears wild but has actually been shaped by farming, forestry and the seasonal movement of livestock for thousands of years.

The next morning, as I watched the sheep and their guardians settle down in the shade, I felt the ancientness of the place. Shepherds must have moved their flocks along the same path and most likely slept under the same chestnut trees for centuries. Traditional farming practices endure here in part because the area is veined with crystal-clear mountain streams, meaning animals traversing the paths are never too far from a drink. So rather than opening the internet, we let these ancient tracks, known as drailles, guide our hikes.

We took sweaty, daylong expeditions without seeing another human or hearing the sound of cars. The forests protected us from the worst of the sun’s blaze but, on our first trek, the real treat came when we rounded a corner to find that what we thought was the sound of wind in the pines was actually water gushing through a narrow gorge below us. Another couple of switchbacks and we arrived at a deep, clear pool created as the stream carved a corner into the rock. Dappled sunlight filtered down through trees clinging to the steep-sided valley, creating spotlights for damselflies to dart through. We stopped for a picnic and a swim in the freezing mountain water, picking wild strawberries from the bank for dessert.

We discovered that these shady, secluded river pools were waiting for us on all the paths that led down from our cottage. As well as being the ultimate pit stops for mid-hike refreshment, they were teeming with wildlife – tadpoles wriggled in the shallows, fish flickered in the depths and a huge variety of butterflies, dragonflies and other insects skimmed the surface. We even saw a snake swimming across water we’d been submerged in just minutes before.

We spent our last afternoon reading on a rock, summoning the energy to walk back up the mountain (one drawback of staying high up on a pass). We watched the sun swing over the water and the light change as the day wore on. When the air began to cool, we worked our way back towards the cottage. As the path turned into an empty, single-track road, a car approached – a big event after so much seclusion. It was Guilaine – the only person apart from the shepherds we’d encountered.

In the evening, as the light faded, the sound of brass band practice drifted towards our veranda. Later, owls called to each other and a distant wild boar screeched into the quiet night. None of this had appeared in my search results. There was no review promising unexpected trumpeting, no listicle recommending the best pool for swimming among tadpoles, and no algorithm that could have told me where the sheep would pass on that first morning. We hadn’t looked at our phones for days – maybe that was the real discovery.

Eight areas in Spain remain under lockdown as Storm Adam continues to wreak havoc

Eight areas in Spain remain under lockdown after restrictions were lifted for some 137 municipalities earlier on Monday, October 19.

Large swathes of the country were ordered to stay indoors as Storm Adam wreaked catastrophic havoc across eastern Spain. Initially, the emergency lockdown covered 78 municipalities in Valencia province and 67 in Alicante. However, according to the Olive Press: “Restrictions have ended for 137 of 145 municipalities, but eight towns in La Safor and La Marina Alta remain under lockdown.

“Please be aware that the following areas are still confined: Bellreguard, Daimús, Oliva, Xàbia, Pego, Miramar, Piles, and Els Poblets. Stay safe and always check local guidelines before travelling through these areas.”

Two fatalities have been confirmed, with a third potential victim of the storm discovered on Monday afternoon when Military Emergency Unit (UME) personnel uncovered the body of an elderly woman in her flood-ravaged home in Oliva, Valencia province. Authorities are yet to officially confirm whether the death was a direct result of drowning or natural causes.

According to the Majorca Daily Bulletin, rainfall totals surpassed 600 litres per square metre, rivers burst their banks and residents were left stranded on rooftops. Helicopters were deployed to rescue those trapped as torrential downpours swept through eastern Spain on Monday, triggering devastating floods that claimed at least two lives and prompted authorities to issue shelter-in-place orders for more than 800,000 residents.

In the past three years, following the October 7 attacks and the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, the wider region has been marked by conflict, economic turmoil, and a shattering of the balance of power.

The network of alliances maintained by Iran, long central to its regional power, has been hit hard and severely weakened. Yemen’s Houthi rebels remain one notable exception.

Israel has made gains. Many of the leaders of the Lebanese group Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas have been killed, while Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was also assassinated in February. Israel occupies most of Gaza, where it has also killed more than 74,000 Palestinians and reduced much of the enclave to rubble.

Its military aggression has come at a cost, isolating it from its traditional allies and making it globally unpopular, including in the United States. The potential for more normalisation deals with Arab countries seems unlikely, at least in the short term.

Instead, Israel continues to launch attacks across the region, crossing previously held red lines – such as the 2025 attack on Doha, Qatar – and making many governments around the world view it as the primary source of unrest in the Middle East.

US not a protector

“Before October 7, the US’s entire policy in the Middle East rested on normalising Israel’s presence in the region through its so-called Abraham Accords,” HA Hellyer of the Royal United Services Institute said, referring to the normalisation deals with several Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates. “Israel’s response to the October 7 attack ended that.”

Instead, rather than a stable Middle East with Israel at its centre, the US entered into a war with Iran this year, and has since looked on as Tehran targeted US allies across the Gulf, shattering the perceived security of the US security umbrella.

Drones and missiles hit Qatar’s Ras Laffan gas hub and started fires near Dubai airport and at Fujairah’s oil zone. In September, the Houthis surged down Yemen’s Red Sea coast, taking the port of Mocha and nearby islands. Their gains tightened their grip on the Bab al-Mandeb strait, threatening a key route for global trade and energy supplies that had become even more important amid disruption in the Strait of Hormuz.

“There’s been a loss of faith in the US as a singularly sufficient security guarantor,” Hellyer continued.

“This is why you’re seeing many in the region talk to other external actors, in addition to continuing, and in some cases deepening their US ties, as well as initiatives such as the Mecca security pact as states in the region look elsewhere for ways to safeguard their security,” he said, referring to the defence agreement between Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan, signed in August, agreeing that an attack on one was to be regarded as an attack on all.

Alliances

Alongside the loss of confidence in the US as a security guarantor has come a dramatic reordering of alliances and rivalries. Much of Iran’s network – most notably Hezbollah, whose reputation had long served as a deterrent against Israeli attack – appeared to buckle under Israeli pressure.

That, in turn, emboldened an Israeli military push that saw troops invade Lebanon in October 2024 and again in March 2026, and seize Syrian territory during the brief power vacuum that followed Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in 2024.

“The Middle East has always been multi-aligned. However, now it’s even more so,” Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, said of the increased leverage given to external actors, such as Turkiye in Syria and China’s involvement in negotiations over the end to war on Iran, as Beijing finds its own energy supplies under threat.

“It’s ironic, since October 7, it’s Israel that has emerged as the revisionist power and Iran almost as the status quo power,” she said of the apparent reversal in status of the two belligerents, with Tehran seemingly more focused on regaining the ground it has lost in the last three years rather than advancing beyond them.

However, none of this was to overstate Israeli influence, or liken it to a regional superpower, Vakil cautioned. “Israel may currently be the preponderant military power in the Middle East, but real power is typically classed as being able to project stability, which Israel hasn’t shown itself able or willing to do,” she said.

Clogged arteries

While Israel and the US hoped February’s attacks would swiftly topple Iran’s government, they have instead opened a new front. Tehran now wields economic leverage over Israel, the US and their partners through the Strait of Hormuz, which borders Iran and typically carries about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas, and through Bab al-Mandeb, which is now threatened by its Houthi allies.

Whatever Tehran’s intentions, the economic pain has been uneven. The West, cushioned by emergency reserves, record US oil production and supplies from countries such as Norway, has so far avoided the turmoil of the 1970s oil shocks, when US drivers queued for petrol, even though the current disruption is on a greater scale. In April, the International Monetary Fund trimmed its 2026 global growth forecast only slightly, to 3.1 percent from 3.3 percent.

Gulf exporters, in contrast, have fared far worse. The same assessment cut its forecast for Saudi Arabia from 4.5 to 3.1 percent, and turned Qatar’s from growth of 6.1 percent into a contraction of 8.6 percent.

“It’s curious, in many ways the West’s reduced need for Gulf oil has increased the degree to which Israel has become a liability for the US,” Israeli political economist Shir Hever told Al Jazeera, referring to a diplomatic alliance between the two states long underpinned by Israel’s strategic position in an oil-rich region central to US interests.

“There’s a train of thought in Israel that the current crises may push the Gulf states into allying with it,” he said, while noting the irony that Israel had been the main aggressor in the conflicts that followed October 7. “Though that seems fairly unlikely.”