After a rather hot train journey, during which Dan was offered sandwiches by an increasingly lunatic middle aged Spanish lady, we arrived in Benicassim in the mid afternoon and jumped directly onto a bus to take us to the Bonet campsite.
On arrival at Bonet we were thrust into the ruthlessly efficient, and largely uneccessary and annoying, tent pitching directorate and administration division of FIB. We were commanded to pitch our tent in a tiny area of grass along with the 200 other campers who had arrived with us on the bus. Consequently our pitch left a lot to be desired being right next to the path with no available shade and no where really to lounge around outside the tents. The erection it's self was hot, sweaty and tiring as we attempted to pound our tent pegs into the iron hard ground with large rocks. Tents pitched we immediately left for the beach and a cooling swim.
Since this was our first night in Benicassim we decided to take things easy and have maybe one quick drink and then head back for some rest. Several hours later, following one last quick drink, all the bars in town were shutting and we found ourselves to be pleasingly drunk. Once again Richard had hijacked the conversation to talk about his 1001 lady loves to which Dan & I listened compassionately and did our best to empathise with Richards, obvious, problems and offer some useful advice. Once again Richard construed this as uneccessary, evil bullying.
The following evening, having spent most of the day on the beach, Richard was too tired to do any more drinking and retired to bed for an early night. Dan & I headed off to the beach bar where we were entertained by groups of very drunk Spanish teenagers drinking large bottles of neat vodka. On the way back to the campsite we discovered a hidden back door entrance to the campsite which involved scaling a minor fence, this saved a good 15 minutes. Dan was attacked by a very drunk lady who had mistaken him for a drug dealer at the beach bar, they began discussing sheep so I left them to it and went to bed.
Another day on and around the beach. We took Richard with us to the beach bar in the evening to watch the Ballet they had been rehearsing the previous evening, on the way we drunk 3 or 4 bottles of Cava to warm up for the evenings entertainments. Ballet is extremely boring, the most exciting part was the drunk Spanish guy who got up and shouted a lot at the stage and staggered through the audience still shouting. Everyone stopped to listen to him, even the dancers on the stage before some of their friends jumped on the man and wrestled him to the ground. He looked like he was considering a reprise of his actions for some time but disappointingly he instead gathered up his shopping trolley full of cider and disappeared towards the sea.
The ballet was deadly dull but the music was quite nice, Richard seemed captivated by the Ballet and said he loved it and that he would go to see Ballet all the time when he was back in the UK. He seemed to be very drunk. I also was feeling a little light headed and went off to look at the people swimming in the sea and to lie around listening to the music instead. The ballet dragged on interminably, eventually Dan & I forced Richard to leave it and go and sit around out on the rocks. Whilst there we forced him to drink lager and cruelly taunted him about his many infatuations with the ladies. Later on we forced him to swim in the sea, but it scared him too much so he quickly ran back out again. On the journey home down the beach we smashed up his cava glass and continued our malicious bullying all the way back to the campsite. I attempted to gain entrance through the shortcut we'd found the previous night but this time as I dropped to the ground on the other side of the fence and enourmously powerful searchlight clicked on and shined full in my face. Excited Spanish jabbering and a newly erected inner security cordon told me that I was to be allowed to go no further so, rather sheepishly, I had to scramble back over the fence and we had to get into the campsite the normal way.
Everyone was still awake on the campsite so we stocked up on cans of lager and went for a wander around, we abused a man in a "ROONEY" T-Shirt until he sloped off looking embarrased, met 3 girls who had a head torch and thought it was the most amazing invention in the world, met a snooty chap who had met "almost everyone in the campsite this evening, at least 90 different people". He was on his own. I met some more people who were fans of the Pixies with whom I had long, rambling and mostly shouted conversation. In short there were a lot of drunk people wandering around and they mostly seemed to be English. We gravitated towards the bar at the top of the campsite and sat around there for a while whilst Dan bought us a pizza. I used to the power of my stare to attract a strange lady across to talk to us, she made me nervous so I just smiled and she talked, crazily, to Richard about lampshades. Some welsh person who's chair I was admiring gave me a smoke, Dan arrived back with his pizza and it was getting fairly light so we went to bed.
It was Thursday, the opening night of the festival. I spent most of the day trying to sleep in the little park next to the beach, this was an excellent place to sleep with plenty of shade and lots of nice grass to lounge on. In other words a complete contrast to the campsite. In later days this park was somewhat ruined by the annoying presence of horders of unwashed Spanish crusties and their dogs. They would spend most of the time wandering around yelling "Cerveza !", fighting and generally making a nuisance of themselves which was not especially conducive to sleep.
Having drunk a judicious quantity of Cava we headed off to the festival ground, this year the concentration of crusties lining the approach road was markedly decreased which Richard attributed to Mean Fiddler heavies discouraging them from hanging around, whether this has any basis in fact is a matter of debate. We did witness a police car trying to force it's self through the festival crowds which, amusingly, caused a wave of panic to flow through the unlicensed hot dog and drink stalls enterprising people had set up on the way. As we advanced 100M in front of the police people were hurling BBQ grills over fences into the neighbouring fields and attempting to make any trace of their stalls disappear before the police arrived.
After a bit of wandering around we met up with Sophie and her mates with whom we watched the Scissor Sisters, Sophie seemed very excitied by them but the rest of us found them rather leaden and uninteresting. All the bands were confined to the main stage so that is where we stayed through a variety of dance acts until the early morning. Predictably it was light when we arrived back at the campsite ( boringly taking the direct route down the road rather than adventuring off into the hills ). Dan went off to sleep on the beach which was in fact I very good idea but I couldn't be bothered to walk any further and went to sleep just as the sun was beginning to heat up properly. Subjectively minutes later I awoke covered in sweat, boiled alive and with a rather annoying hangover, the cold shower helped enourmously ( Richard reported almost collapsing in the queue outside ) and provided the energy to trek down to the beach to find somewhere cooler to sleep. By this time the park was full of crusties so I found a nice spot underneath the stage where the Ballet had taken place and spent most of the afternoon dozing there, in the shade. Dan & Rich met up with Sophie and her friends but I missed all of them, spent an unprofitable 2 hours trying to find something to eat in the town ( the cafes seemed to be far busier this year ) and arrived back at the campsite as it was getting dark, just in time to drink some cava and prepare for the night ahead.
This was the first proper night of the festival with all the stages open, it was also the night the Pixies were playing and the Pixies were one of the main reasons I had decided to come this year. We arrived in time to push our way up to our favourite pylon meeting place where we were hoping Richard would find us ( he had appeared unable to walk much faster than a tortoise on the way down to the festival and consequently Dan & I had left him a long way behind ).
Dan & I both noticed that it seemed way way busier in the main stage than it had ever been in previous years ( normally you can sit around quite easily by the pylon but now it was a right crush ). The Pixies began amazingly but things soon shuddered to a halt when the level of crushing going on at the front became too dangerous and the Pixies had to stop playing whilst this was sorted out. That took a good 20 - 30 mins during which time a lot of people left. When the Pixies came back they were still brilliant but playing in a noticeably more relaxed, chilled style. I loved the Pixies.
After this I don't remember what we did, I think I watched the end of Echo & The Bunnymen and the Strokes with Dan but managed to lose him somehow, feeling a little tipsy I had a short rest and re-fueling stop at the back of the main stage area where I discovered there is a far far better sound than there is by the pylon. Wandering about ensued and by and by I ended up in a tent waiting for Le Hammond Inferno Featuring Namosh.
The tent was pretty empty so I placed myself strategically toward the front and watched with bemusement as a strange man in an odd suit came on the stage and proceeded to act bizarrely for quite a while. This it appeared was Namosh. Everyone around me was as puzzled as me by what was going on, he would periodically remove items of his clothing and turn on some kind of musical device by hitting it with a drumstick, when he hit again it would either stop or get louder. Namosh told us we needed to wake the beat up, the beat was sleeping but wanted to come out and play for us. We shouted and Namosh banged on the musical device with his drumstick ( by now he was down to his underwear ), every time he banged with his drumstick the catchy little tune his device was playing would get louder, and louder, and louder, and stupidly louder, and ridiculously louder, deafeningly louder until my entire body was actually vibrating in time with air pulsing out of the speakers. At some point Namosh left and Le Hammond Inferno arrived and everyone started dancing like lunatics, the tent was still quite empty so there was plenty of room to dance around like a lunatic. I danced like a lunatic and tried to understand what some Spanish people dancing like lunatics next to me were saying, I couldn't so eventually they grinned and gave up. Later I looked outside and it was light so once again I arrived back at the tent just in time for the full roasting power of the sun to turn my tent into an oven.
Shortly afterwards I awoke, covered in numerous rivers of sweat, lying in a sea of sweat, enveloped by a noxious smell of sweat and suntan oil. It was like being in oven, except that I would imagine ovens are a lot cooler, and coupled with general exhaustion and a persistant hangover I would say that it is probably one of the least pleasant ways to awake except perhaps if you if were to find yourself awaking in the dungeon of an evil torturer who was looming above you cackling and grasping his numerous shiny instruments of torture. At least it might be nice and cool in his dungeon.
The cold showers are an absolute godsend, as is the inexplicable social forces which cause there to be almost no queue outside the portakabin showers even when the queue for the showers in the shower block are around the, er, block. A cold shower and lovely litre of fresh orange juice later I was about ready for the day. Richard also was awake ( Dan having disappeared off to the beach at first light ) by this time and having just managed to avoid fainting from the heat outside the shower block was ready for a relaxing day sitting around in cafes.
Cafe sitting completed it was time to get back to the campsite and prepare for the evening, Dan was already back from the beach and had cracked open the cava for us which we slowly drank as night fell and showered and changed into something resembling clean clothes ( by now there was not much resemblance with any of my clothes and any definition of clean ).
Dan & Richard had informed me that this evening it was techno dance party night, boom boom boom all night long. I could hardly contain my enthusiasim and the enthusiastic Joe who had been masquerading as me the previous day had packed his bags and headed off to a gentle mountain retreat leaving lazy Joe back in his place. Lazy Joe was not especially excited by Dance Music.
Our plans this evening did not really involve much of the alcohol which I had been relying on during the previous week or so which was in some ways probably a relief for my poor liver. Instead I found myself bouncing from foot to foot in a semi lethargic manner to some dance act or other. The tent began to heat up and people began to remove their tops the better to let their sweat dissolve into the atmosphere. At some point Sophie and her friends turned up but shortly afterwards disappeared. It turned out we were listening to 2 Many DJs who I do ususally quite like. On this occasion though the crush of people prevented me pulling any of my more impressive dancing moves ( apart from the lethargic bobbing from foot to foot ) and the sheer number of large sweating men who had managed to surround me was beginning to get on my nerves. Eventually I could take it no longer and left to find some fresh air and relief for my poor be-bobbed on feet.
I decided a period of sitting on the grass was called for, Dan & Rich disappeared back into the sweat dome. The sky was a luxiouriously inviting deep blue and the grass a lush, comfortable mattress in which I was able to sink gratefully. Stars winked in the heavens and the strains of beautiful sounding music drifted across from a nearby tent making the lazy curls of cigarette smoke pulse and waft in time with the squalls of guitar. Happy people and a low, exciting, buzz of conversation cocooned me from the sweaty hell from which I had escaped. Time passed.
The band responsible for the beautiful music had long since departed by the time I was curious enough to explore my surroundings properly, no matter though I was finding simply wandering around an unusually pleasant experience. Jumping off the small walls and ledges demonstrated the new elastic properties of my legs and the simple pleasure of eating food was especially absorbing and unusually pleasing.
Bounding through the crowds of smoke like people and fractal like circles of sitting people I decided to check on the whereabouts of Richard & Dan, I guessed they would still be in the dance tent but several traverses of some of the less populated areas towards the back failed to provide any definite sightings. I thought I may have recognised the back of Richards head but attempting to navigate a course through the increasingly packed and sweaty crowds once again threatened to puncture my aura of zen like calm so I gave up on this mission and spent some more time wandering around the other tents where I found some nice guitar music to dance to for a while.
I decided to leave before it actually got light and was considering the advisability of waiting for a bus rather than the long lonely trudge back to the campsite. Things weren't looking too good as I approached the bus waiting area as I saw two fully laden coaches pulling off. A bit further on though I noticed two more buses headed back from the campsite who would shortly be arriving back at the bus stop. By walking very quickly I arrived just in time to jump straight on the bus which then immediately left and dropped me off by the supermarket.
During the walk up through the wasteland to the campsite I quietly laughed to myself at the care fellow bus travellers were taking navigating the broken ground and small walls on the wasteland, me and bouncy legs made short work of such obstacles and I was soon at the hole in the fence leading onto the main road. There was a big queue here of people waiting to slowly negotiate this last challenge before the campsite. They were being excessively over careful I, foolishly, thought. My turn came and confidently I leapt up onto the wall having carefully calculated my trajectory to take me onto the pavement and avoid catching my head on the broken mesh steel of the top of the hole. This bit worked perfectly but I had failed to notice a long trailing metal strand at ground level, my foot caught in this mid leap propelling me head first into the pavement. I realised my peril instantly and flawlessly adjusted my body position to perfom a forward roll and transfer my downward momentumn into forward motion. This also worked perfectly but I had failed to notice yet more broken strands of metal wire on the floor. One of these stuck into the side of my hand and created a rather nasty, grit filled, gash at the base of my little finger.
Once they'd stopped laughing a lot of people asked if I was OK. "Ha !" I cried. "Why, yes I'm fine, fine I tell you !" I yelled as I moved quickly away from the scene trying to look as unembarrased as I could manage. I don't think this was very successful.
Once I'd given the gash a good rinsing out in the toilet it stopped bleeding and didn't look too bad. I spent some time chilling out in the tent constructing a plaster arrangement which would hopefully keep out any more grit or sand from getting in the hole and smoking cigarettes. I noticed that dawn was catching up on me once again and the sky was beginning to get lighter.
I decided that sleeping in the tent again was not an option and began getting ready to head down for the beach, I was still feeling fairly energetic. Richard arrived back but could not be persuaded to come down the beach with me. I considered going to the water park instead but Richard didn't want to do that either so I figured if I was on my own I may as well go to the beach.
As I walked past the people still returning from the festival several of them seemed incredulous that anyone could be bothered to go to the beach at this time in the morning. There were a steady trickle of like minded people headed in the same direction as me though so I walked fairly quickly to try and get a good spot. It was a very pleasant walk and I arrived on the beach just as the sun was rising properly.
I was planning on sleeping under the stage again but there seemed to be a lot of JCB's surrounding it which made it look like there might be some loud construction work going on on the stage later on ( in fact there wasn't and this was a very bad decision indeed ). Instead I put up the sun shade and lay down for some much needed rest. Initially this all went fine but then the sun started moving around the sky so I had to constantly adjust the sun shade. Then a load of crusties and their dogs set up camp behind and started shouting at one another in loud unitelligble crusty yells and this got increasingly annoying. I went to find somewhere else to sleep. There was no room anywhere under the stage and the only place to sleep in the park was on the gravel which didn't look too comfortable. I walked into the fork of a forklift truck and made a large dent and a further gash on my ankle.
Eventually I bought a £5 air bed and set it up in the shade on the gravel and got another couple of hours dozing in before having a nice shower at the beach showers and beginning the trek back up to the town for something to eat. I stopped off for a further sleep outside the lesiure centre and trudged around the cafes looking for somewhere to eat. Everywhere was either full or closed but eventually I found somewhere indoors to sit down and have some pasta.
Back at the campsite Rich & Dan were drinking cava and preparing for the night ahead. A nice shower, some cava and some bread and cheese and I was beginning to feel more human again.
We arrived at the arena just in time for Coldcut, I wasn't planning on doing too much drinking this evening since I was feeling quite tired. However my first litre of Heniken went down very easily. There was a lovely dancing girl in front of us in the Coldcut tent and she was dancing very beautifully and looking extremely lovely, I think she inspired us all to get into it and get on down with a funky boogie so before long everyone was dancing about. Coldcut were very good and inspired me to do a lot more drinking than I had intended.
Next there was a period of eating, for some reason I was starving. We watched the end of Depeche Mode from the back of the furthest reach of the main stage and drank some vodkas and further litres of heineken.
At some point I became very tired, lying on the grass was suddenly a lot more attractive that standing up or walking around. I listened to Placebo and some other band in this fashion. Dan returned from a red bull fuelled wander elsewhere and I had some more food. It was no good though, even food didn't seem to be providing any immediate energy so instead I decided that since it was still dark I would head back to the campsite and see about having a proper 4 or 5 hours sleep before it got too hot again.
Luckily I walked right onto a waiting bus again and within minutes was back at the campsite, this time being extremely careful climbing through the hole in the fence. It was still dark but now suddenly I didn't feel much like sleeping so sat around smoking cigarettes instead. Eventually I did pass out and it was still dark so I must have a got a good 4 hour sleep in before it got too hot.
In the morning Dan had gone to the beach so Rich and I decided to go to the water park for the day. Before this I did some washing since all my clothes had long ago become absolutely filthy and were essentially no longer wearable.
We stopped off in a cafe for some breakfast and were served by the loveliest waitress in the world. She was obviously attracted to me and couldn't keep her hands off or stop stroking my arm and rubbing my back when she was taking our orders. I ordered quite a lot of food and drink from her. Later on she showed me how to get coins into vending machines even when the vending machine keeps rejecting your coins. It is a very simple trick and it works.
The water park was 100% brilliant. I spent a good hour or so splashing around in the pool and then the rest of the afternoon lying on the sun loungers in a lovely bit of shade. Pure heaven and I really wished I'd have been sensible enough to have come here yesterday instead of bothering with the beach.
After the water park we drank a litre of Sangria which made my vision very blurry and had something to eat. Dan was back at the campsite drinking cava so we drank some more cava and had a lovely cold shower and were ready to head off for the beach party.
Richard and Dan moaned about lugging the heavy cool of cava all the way down to the beach, why Richard had carried practically all the cava all the way on his own last year and figured he was definitely due a rest by now. Luckily I have large pockets in my shorts and could fit a bottle of cava in each of them. Dan looked for vegetarian food on the road down to the beach but didn't find anything.
The beach was packed, it seemed way busier than the previous year but we found a spot close to the path out to the rocks and dumped our coolbox of cava and kicked back to listen to the music.
The first act on the stage were called The Queens Of Noize. Not only couldn't they spell but it transpired they couldn't DJ either. I have been at parties where men who are so drunk they can only crawl along the floor to the record player and certainly can't identify any particular records once they arrive manage to play far better sets than the Queens Of Noize did. Honestly it was dreadful and almost embarrasing to watch. Apparently the Queens Of Noize are two stupid women who have managed to sleep with most of the club owners and DJs in London to the extent where they have been given their own record players ( or decks as I think they're known ) and told to piss off out of London and inflict your dreadful noise on someone else.
A strange spanish man mistook our cool box full of cava for his cool box full of cider but he was soon restrained by his friends. Richards motormouth music journalist friend appeared and explained the fine distinction between satan core thrash and misery core thrash, this took him quite a long time and convinced me that a swim in the sea would be a fun thing to do.
It was fun in the sea, the only problem was that I was wearing my glasses because I was worried that if I didn't I would never find my way back to the cool box or my clothes ever again. I had lost my sunglasses to a giant wave in Spain the previous year and was worried the same thing would happen now with my one and only pair of normal glasses. I told myself that the waves were much smaller right now and I wouldn't be diving into them so nothing could possibly go wrong. Instantly a huge wave caught me by surprise and carried my glasses clean off my head, luckily, very luckily I managed to catch them underwater before they were swept away never to be seen again.
With or without my glasses the light show and lasers from the stage were very impressive indeed, the lasers were able to draw pictures and moving images like short animations. This was totally invisible from the beach but totally amazing in the sea. I spent some time in the sea trying not to lose my glasses, swimming around and watching the light show.
Once I'd trekked back to my clothes it had become mysteriously cold. Richards talkative music journalist friend had bought me another litre of heneiken and was having an animated argument with a drunk spanish guy who thought he'd stolen his sandals. The Spanish man looked like he was about to kill for his supposed sandals so I prepared to intervene but luckily ( for him, surely ) he got bored and wandered off.
Richard seemed to be in conversation with a couple of girls a little way further down the beach, this seemed to be an exciting development and the two girls didn't appear to have any obvious boy friends in attendance which was nothing short of a miracle. I sipped my lager and slipped back into my sand encrusted clothes.
At this point I realised I was out of cigarettes so headed off to find someone who would sell me some. I ended up in the one of the cafes near the bar which was filled with a lot of very confused people and a person with a large candle. I made conversation but was unable to help anyone out with their confusion although I did ascertain that the purpose of the candle was to check for, the all too common, methane leaks which are apparently so common on spanish beaches at 3AM.
Richard was still in conversation with the ladies but now a man had joined them and was filling Richards glass with some kind of dark, alcoholic looking, liquid. Free booze I thought and went over to introduce myself.
The two girls were Spanish and sisters. Predictably one of them was engaged to the man with the booze. He was very drunk because he had been drinking rather questionable rum which he was buying by the pint from nearby crusties. Somehow I ended up with a glass of this liquid and immediately noticed that it was extremely strong indeed. The man was very impressed with Richard and had named him "The Boss" because Richard was matching him pint for pint of his extremely strong, questionable, rum.
The man was a huge Pixies fan and the girls were great fun to talk to even though the language barrier was such that a lot of the conversation became very mangled and hard to understand. They seemed to appreciate my English sense of humour however and we were all getting along very well. I had to keep refusing the offer of further pints of rum because I didn't think I had the same constitution as "The Boss" and I was enjoying myself just fine without any further alcohol. Somehow I ended up with another litre of ordinary lager.
"The Boss" and the spanish man were getting on fine and downing pint after mighty pint of industrial strength rum. The spanish mans conversation was by now beginning to suffer from the sustained rum abuse and he wanted to make it perfectly clear that if we were ever in Madrid we must come and stay with him. He had a huge house with many many rooms ( his girlfriend pointed out that in fact they had a small house and only one small spare bedroom where the rum was stored ) and many many friends in Madrid ( his girlfriend pointed out he had in fact 3 friends in Madrid including her ) and he would circulate our descriptions amongst his wide network of friends such that if we so much as set foot in Madrid without staying in his house he would hunt us down and kill us like dogs. His girlfriend said they would do no such thing. We were treated to this speech once every 3 minutes to the extent that after half an hour we were all word perfect and would chant along in time with him.
Dan arrived from the sea and was for some reason named as "The Quiet Man" which is probably the first and only time I will ever hear Dan described thus.
Our new friends continued to ply Richard with Rum and the rest of us with cigarettes and explained how being from Madrid they despise the residents of Barcelona and all other Catalan types. It was beginning to get light and the girls were thinking of returning home and suggested that the sister who hadn't been drinking had better drive. The man exclaimed that they were both due for a good beating when he got home anyway but if they dared to stop him driving they would getting a beating right now. We all had a nice photo taken and the girls led him off to the car and their impending beatings, fading into the distance we could just make out "... and if you are ever in Madrid you must come and stay in my large house or else ...".
I looked around and the beach had taken on the aspect of Armageddon ( assuming God chooses to fight Armageddon with strong drink and free drugs ). Nearby a sand encrusted female form was attempting to rise to her knees and groaning in painful sounding manner. Other groups were staggering bemusedly amongst the corpses of those who hadn't quite survived the night. The sand encrusted girl was being force fed some kind of liquid by a dazed looking man which caused her to be sick all over both of them. They didn't seem to mind especially and groaned in unison.
"The Boss" had sunk to the sand and was staring vaguely out to sea. I wondered what words of power and command he would utter. "Urrrgh, I don't feel very well" he finally managed. He didn't look very well so we forced him to go for a swim in sea which we thought might wake him up sufficiently to make him walk back to the campsite. Instead he used the opportunity to throw up in the sea ( he wasn't alone in this, many other casualties were taking the same course ). Eventually he returned from the sea and Dan & I were able to coax him yard by painful yard up the beach towards the campsite. Richards progress was so slow and painful that in the end Dan & I decided the kindest course was simply to leave him to his fate and get back for some sleep ourselves. Some part of Richards brain must have still be functioning since we did occasionally spot him far far behind us.
"The Boss" eventually arrived back at the campsite and basically fell into the tent. It was now full daylight and probably 9AM or something so we just had time for a short power nap before we had to get the train back to Barcelona later in the afternoon.
Before long, but after a surprisingly deep sleep, I woke up to the blazing heat of sun. I noticed Richards feet poking out from behind the other side of his tent so I guessed that for some reason best known to "The Boss" he had decided to sleep outside the tent on the side fully in the glare of the sun. Dan was also stirring and noticed that in fact "The Boss" had decided to sleep in the full glare of the sun, next to one of the main thoroughfares through the campsite without any clothes on at all. He had used some tin foil to cover his modesty but unfortunately this was drifting around yards from his sleeping form. We did the decent thing and woke him up. He didn't look very well.
Considering I had been pretty drunk myself the previous night and had had very little sleep I didn't feel too bad, a nice cold shower, a few litres of fresh orange juice and some iced coffee and I was ready to break camp. I managed to rip some important parts of my tent so decided to leave it where it was. Dan & I went off looking for interesting salvage amongst the stuff everyone else had left and I had another cold shower and changed into my least dirty clothes for the journey home.
Whilst in the shower I heard some people commenting about the naked man they had seen earlier in the morning sleeping on the campsite somewhere. "The Bosses" fame was spreading. In the showers I was also surprised by a totally naked man in a cowboy hat striding past me and out into the campsite, a series of shrieks and disgusted tutting tracked his progress.
There was in theory a bus which would take us to the station to get our train so we loaded up and headed down to the supermarket to see if we could find it. Richard was still looking very ill and much prefered the lying around waiting for a bus to arrive to walking about and given his condition I don't blame him at all. Eventually though it became clear there was no bus and if we wanted to catch the train we'd have to walk it in the full glare of the midday sun, with all our bags and salvaged sun shades etc. The supermarket was totally out of bottled water in any sensibly sized bottles so I had to buy a 6 litre jerry can of the stuff to prevent both myself and Richard dying of dehydration during the walk.
It took about 45 mins to walk to the station and by the time we arrived we were totally soaked through in sweat and generally looking very filthy and unsavoury indeed, I collapsed on the platform under my sun shade and was briefly joined from some equally scuzzy looking Italians. The train arrived and swiftly conveyed us to Barcelona. Rich & Dan had been planning to get off at one of the stations along the way and spend a few days there before they flew home but in the event Richards condition prevented this from happening. I was flying back a few hours after the train arrived so I was very pleased it was going to arrive in Barcelona on time.
None of the toilets in Barcelona Sants were working sufficiently well for me to have a decent wash and change into my more respectable clothes for the flight. The T-Shirt I was wearing had got a bit more ripped up during the walk the station and was basically hanging in shreds from my shoulders. My shorts were covered in sandy encrustations and mud and generally I looked like a complete tramp. We had an excellent meal in a cafe in the station and then I had to say my goodbyes and head off to catch my plane leaving Dan & Rich to enjoy a few more days in Spain.
The airport had much better toilets so I was able to have a fairly decent wash and change into some relatively smarter clothing, the plane was delayed for 45mins which meant there was no way I would be able to get a train back from Coventry so not wishing to pay £45 for a taxi home I co-erced my Dad into picking me up.
I had expected it to much colder in the UK than it was in Spain but amazingly it was just as hot, apparently they had been experiencing a massive heatwave. I was due to leave for Scotland and my cycling holiday in a days time so I arrived home and immediately crashed into a long, deep, sleep.
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