General: Spain

The commentary went on about the industries of Catalonia, those being paper, cork, textiles and metal in the form of cars in some areas. We saw cork trees stripped of their bark with the brown colour underneath which denoted that the bark had been removed less than a month ago, they go silver after that. Cork trees are the only trees that can survive without their bark; it grows back and since the trees grow prolifically around the Spanish hills, ...
...approximately 60% of the entire world’s cork. This has reduced in recent years to around 40%, which is still a considerable proportion, especially on a global scale for such a relatively small country.

We passed through a few towns whose folk seemed to be wary of this massive coach loaded with tourists eyeballing their quaint little town. We then began to climb up, into the mountains.

“There if you look to the right, ... more

The commentary went on about the industries of Catalonia, those being paper, cork, textiles and metal in the form of cars in some areas. We saw cork trees stripped of their bark with the brown colour underneath which denoted that the bark had been removed less than a month ago, they go silver after that. Cork trees are the only trees that can survive without their bark; it grows back and since the trees grow prolifically around the Spanish hills, the country used to dominate the world’s cork industry, supplying approximately 60% of the entire world’s cork. This has reduced in recent years to around 40%, which is still a considerable proportion, especially on a global scale for such a relatively small country.

We passed through a few towns whose folk seemed to be wary of this massive coach loaded with tourists eyeballing their quaint little town. We then began to climb up, into the mountains.

“There if you look to the right, umm, you can see the tallest top of the mountain range,” said the tour lady. It was very, very tall. It is about 1,300 metres tall as I recall her saying and one day years ago there was a great deal of mist in the area; there was a little there now, hanging listlessly in the heat, but she told us that owing to the mist a British aircraft flew straight into the tallest peak in the pre-Pyrenean mountains and that as a result, there is an English cemetery where the passengers were buried. There were no survivors. I think it’s a little remiss of them, really, to wallop one’s ‘plane into – not just any old mountain, but the tallest peak in the range, you’d think they’d watch out for that one, wouldn’t you, but there you have it.

The scenery got lovelier and lovelier and as we ascended and then we came across a huge area of burnt-out vegetation. It was colossal, just as we had seen on the way down to Spain, like winter had drawn in, but there alone. The tour lady told us that all year round, Catalonia has these beautiful green mountains because the trees on them are generally pine trees and so they are evergreens, but here, everything was burnt out dark brown and black. The authorities believe that 90% of such fires are started deliberately and, as she thoughtfully remarked, it is sad.

We arrived in Rupit after about two hours on the coach. Not long beforehand we passed its little sister village, Pruit, which you will note has the same letters, but a different order; sweet, isn’t it? Well, Rupit was founded in the late 10th Century and has artefacts dating from then; most of the buildings date back from 17th Century and as we walked from the car park, we saw great stones above the doors with the year of building carved into them, over three centuries’ erosion obscuring them slightly. Most of them were from the 1680s. They were left unclad and looked so old it was as though we’d stepped out of a Delorian to find ourselves in that nostalgic age everyone can remember but never really existed. We’d found it, 850 metres up in the mountains.

My mum has vertigo and suffers shooting pains from her feet and up her legs whenever there’s a relatively high ledge and so, now we had to cross a wobbly suspension bridge. On the coach, my mum was saying how she wasn’t sure she could do it, but if she had to, then she’d have to. Well, she did it and the bridge did wobble a bit and it was really quite fun. She wanted to do it again and again, but we were a bit pressed for time and wanted to get a drink. It was about at this time when I realised that the memory card for my lovely new digital camera was resting its chips in the SD drive of my laptop, some considerable distance away in the hotel room. There was much frustration and we got mum’s camera in the end.

We took photo upon photo and it was great fun to be doing so in such a picturesque setting. We stopped into a church we passed along the way (hee hee) and it was very dark. And old, it’s 13th Century, which makes it a great deal older even than my dad. It was very small with loads of chairs and I thought it a bit odd, what with there not being too many people in the village and all that, but as I stepped up to the altar to have a nosey, some Welsh kid turned the light on. Jesus never looks happy, does he? We took some bad photos and as I was admiring the altar, something caught my eye. To my left there was a figure just watching me from the darkness. I made faux looking around touristy actions and walked out of his line of vision and promptly found Tommy and my mum were outside waiting for me, so I left and forgot to mention the figure.

We stopped for a coffee and explored the rest of the village. As we walked, crazy tour lady told us that there was a nice view just round the corner and then that was it, no more to see. It’s a pleasantly tiny place with marvellous cobbled streets, a few restaurants, a gift shop and lovely, lovely buildings. The people take a great deal of pride in their balconies, we were told, and they were beautifully and colourfully decorated with various flowers and such. Rupit is also the starting point for trails for walkers. There are varying lengths of walks from just under ten kilometres, to 40km, for which you’ll need a big bottle of water and the thighs of an elephant – all four of them. I can imagine that walking in the area would be quite exciting but exhausting. The hilliness of it all combined with the heat would make for a fairly challenging day out. Having mentioned the heat, it was cooler than lowland Spain and the coast, for example, but it was still pretty hot in the sun.

My mum went off to explore the town a little further and Tommy and I lost ourselves down a side path which led down to a walkers’ trail. The slope down which we walked curved to the left and was quite steep, the effect being that some distance down the trail, the town could be seen behind us, perched as it is on a cliff with the wild trees and mountains in the background. We took pictures and found some lizards to play with but realised the time and quickly made our way back onto the coach. We played on swings whilst waiting for the crazy tour lady and got back on the coach where the crazy Spanish driver lady, whose name was Aloma, was waiting to take us further up the hill.

You only really get a sense of being up a mountain when you look down, otherwise, you could be anywhere and as we traversed bridges galore on the winding mountain roads, looking down was a source of some fascination for me. All I could see was green, green, green and, on occasion some water. The scenery was breathtaking and dramatically sweeping. To be honest I doubt I could describe it and do it justice, but I’ll give it a go, ready? Okay, close your eyes.

You’d better open them again because that’s just not going to work. Okay, imagine a deep green rise of land in front of you, high at its peak and covered with trees, a few bare patches where yellowy rock shows through. Now imagine more peaks behind it, faded green with the mist in the air, some taller than the first, some less so. Imagine that everywhere you look it’s the same, closer peaks being a luscious deep green with so many trees and the occasional rock showing with lighter peaks behind as far as you can see. Now you notice in the distance something that could just as easily denote that you’re in the deserts of the USA, a great big square rock, capping off one of the peaks, treeless and stark.

Nice isn’t it? Well, we went up and up, our peak was 1,100 metres above sea level, that’s around three-and-a-half thousand feet and when you consider that height, really try to consider it: Let’s say you’re six feet tall. Imagine there are two of you, one standing on the other’s head. That’s twelve feet. Now four of you, pretty high at 24 feet. Eight of you; 48 feet and someone at the bottom has collapsed under the weight, killing them instantly. You’d need 550 six-feet tall people standing one atop the other to reach the height we did today. That’s why the view is so damn good; you’re up there looking down on the rest of the world.

We drove past a restaurant and went up to about 800 metres (400 six-footers) to have a good look at the view and take some pictures. I took photos in a 360° arc with the intention of sticking them all together. The view was simply wonderful; it was like the whole world was down there. We could see pylons, an artificial lake, huge hills and a thousand-year-old lava flow. I’ve seldom seen such beauty, but there it was hitting my retina for real, not through a TV or the internet or books, just there.

We bundled back on the coach and went to the restaurant we’d passed earlier, Coll de Condreu. We had been told about some traditional Catalan foods, including the little biscuits we were presented with at the table. Their name translated to ‘nun’s farts’ and were, in my opinion, rather unpleasant. My mum liked them, comparing them to Farley’s rusks and Tommy seemed to like them also, but I never liked rusks. The lady along the end of the table complained that I dug my knees into her back, for she sat in front of me in the coach. I apologised and she told me not to worry, I can’t help being tall.

I looked around in the restaurant and was struck by a sensation of being back at school. The dining area was massive and filled to capacity with tables and chairs, like the cafeteria you’re glad to leave behind, clutching your GCSEs. We had plates in front of us, some glasses, a dish of nun’s farts and sliced Catalan sausage, which I nibbled on until the food arrived. It was nice, but a touch plasticky. The first course was macaroni cheese and there was nothing wrong with the food per se, in fact it was very tasty, it’s just that its arrival on my plate, with a ‘thunk’ noise as the stroppy looking dinnerlady served it from her platter. I was twelve again.

We drank wine and had a laugh about the general situation and discussed what good value for money the trip was. It was around 100€ for the three of us, including the meal, wine and coffee with brandy.

We bought three bottles of the nice red wine for 5€ and a bottle of walnut liqueur for the same price. Very good, very good indeed. We got on the coach tiddled and fell asleep, thinking we’d end up back at the hotel in time to not want any dinner. Au contraire, we stopped off at another town, Besalú. The town is dominated by a bridge with a portcullis, dating back from the 12th Century. It was really a very lovely place to visit, but our visit was marred by Tommy needing a wee. We went into a restaurant and asked for servicio only to be told that we had to buy a drink first. We left and Tommy pissed up the front of the restaurant. He didn’t, of course, but I think he should of, instead, he pissed up a bridge with portcullis dating back from the 12th Century as I kept a look out. Tommy seems incapable of visiting the continent without pissing somewhere unusual. Last time, it was a bin in the Metro in Paris, now, it was a Roman bridge.

We saw a gecko and Tommy climbed on my sunburn to take a picture of it. In fact, he took two, both of which were blurry. The buildings were beautiful, Roman with Gothic features, columns and the like all made with that light yellowy-brown stone. There was a church to poke around in but we didn’t, instead we went and had a look in some gift shops and stopped in a café to have a drink. Leather goods were aplenty, but the quality was high and the price was similar. I quite fancied a leather-bound notebook for my journalistic exploits, but for 27.50€, you can keep it.

We got back on the coach and made it back to the hotel in time for dinner and ate a surprising amount, considering how much we’d eaten at in the school cafeteria. Tommy and I had a poke around up town whilst my mum had a bath and such and we met for a drink in the bar then wandered off up the seafront to get my mum a henna tattoo. She got a dragon and it looks very nice. The man doing it had woman troubles that just kept on and on, barely stopping for breath as she had a go at the poor bloke, who was desperately trying to concentrate on his job. My mum swore about it afterwards and rightly so.

We found many big crickets that live in the palm trees. They make such a great noise and they’re so sweet. As we walked back, Tommy and I rescued them from being trodden on by picking them up and depositing them in some bush or other. They’re about an inch and a half long and some of them have wings under beetle-like carapaces. They’re sweet, they are; I like crickets.

We got pissed in an al fresco restaurant on the beach by way of deceptively strong sangria. That stuff can be really quite pokey. We wobbled back to the hotel and got even more pissed. Tommy pulled an artificial plant from its housing and waved it around like a feather duster and my mum nearly wet herself, then we went up to bed, where Tommy collapsed in a heap on the bed. He phoned Gemma to ask the time (god only knows how much that’s going to cost me (I know now: £11)) and found out that she’s going to Lanzarote tomorrow. Then, Tommy fell from the bed onto the floor and told me, “I can smell fishy mish.” Much hilarity ensued and Tommy got his arse out and ran along the corridor of the fourth floor mooning like a nutter. We got ready for bed and pretended to be sober, drank a lot of water and fell into a deep, deep sleep.

Thursday: Animals and stuff.
Today we were to go horse riding, but not until a quarter to three in the afternoon, so after breakfast and shaking off the general feeling of drink-related nausea, Tommy and I went to the beach while my mum traipsed off to the shops in the touristy side of town, in search of gold. The beach in Blanes is shaped, for want of a better comparison, like an arse. Imagine, if you will, the buttocks being the sea and the beach is shaped around that and the butt-crack is the rock formation of sa Palomera. Perhaps sa Palomera sticks into the arse a bit much, but it’s a big arse, so I’m running with my simile.

We found a spot on the inside of the right buttock, where the sea was considerably calmer ergo clearer. As we looked, we could see little fish swimming about our feet. It was amazing to think that for the past three years that we’ve been to the Costa Brava, we’ve never noticed that it has a beach so teeming with life. We had our diving masks on and went out a bit further than we had done on the Monday and found to our astonishment that the Mediterranean was jam packed with aquatic life, all over the place. We spent a very tiring time in there and saw fish moving about in shoals. It was such a wonderful feeling to look down and see literally countless fish swimming about my feet, sometimes brushing against my leg. I went to the bottom and saw little catfish-type-things filtering edible crap from the bottom, I tried in vain to catch them, it was fun but totally pointless. Tommy and I swam around playing with the fish and the second disposable aquatic camera. The pictures from the first were a little unclear, but interesting enough to enthuse Tommy to buy another and spend the film in one morning.

We reconvened with my mother who had failed to actually find any shops open. It was September 11 and Catalonia day. As we got on the minibus to the ranch where we were to ride horses, we finally worked out the political thing that’s going on in Catalonia: it wants to be an independent country. It has its own language and its own flag and now it wants independence, like Andorra. There is a sheet with writing on it hanging near a restaurant close to sa Palomera, it’s in Spanish (or Catalan, rather) but it starts off with “Politicio = iceberg; Blanes = Titanic.” A little worrying to say the least, but it has fascinated me for quite some time as I’ve noticed a constantly used graffito scattered about the place that consists of a five-pointed star with four stripes underneath. Whilst in the sea, I had an idea that it was to do with the independence thing as a different kind of flag was flying atop sa Palomera, it was the Catalan flag (four red horizontal stripes on a yellow background) with a modification: a blue triangle on the right hand side, pointing inward with a white, five-pointed star on it. I’d discussed my theory with Tommy and mum and, as we sat on the minibus, Tommy pointed out another graffito that said “CATALONIA IS NOT SPAIN.”
“Ah,” I said, “that’ll be it, then.”

Antonio, the man who had come to collect us from outside the hotel Horitzo (central coach pick-up point for the world, it seems) spoke somewhat incomprehensibly. This was largely down to the extreme proximity of the microphone to his mouth, but also due to his loose grasp of the English language. I gave up trying to understand, but my mum nodded and smiled occasionally, so I gathered either Parkinson’s disease was setting in, or she could actually understand him.

When we got to Ranxo Mestres we were attacked and eaten by killer flies. Well, they wouldn’t leave us alone at least, so that quickly became annoying. The horses were many and plenty and one of the ranchers picked out a horse and beckoned to Tommy. It was a large horse and once Tommy was aboard, it wandered off. Of our number, I was next to get on a horse and I was told it was “a special horse for a special person.” It was huge, bigger than Tommy’s and in fact the tallest horse there. I experienced the same thing as Tommy: my horse just did its own thing with me perched on like a nervous passenger. We had pictures taken one by one and when we were all on, we rode off about the countryside, mountains around us and stuff that looked remarkably like iron ore jutting out of hillsides. On occasion, we’d trot and that was a touch nerve-wracking because we were given no safety hats or any guidance in terms of what to do if something goes hideously wrong. I had to reposition my bollocks because I bounced on them whilst trotting and, to be totally frank, it fucking hurt, but at least I had the sense to reposition my testicles prior to moving off, otherwise it would have been crushed nuts for me…

The scenery was beautiful, lush green hills, thick with trees, intriguing undergrowth and steady mountains lining the horizon. The sun was beating down relentlessly and I was sweating like an oinker, but I didn’t really care because this was an interesting experience. There were about twenty of us all on horses that knew the route like the backs of their hooves. One of the ranchers was behind us all making strange clucking noises that he must have been able to perform owing to some dental defect or other. The people of the ranch did seem very scruffy, simple country folk, but they knew their horses and had them trained extremely well. Except, perhaps the one between Tommy’s legs. This horse was clearly quite, quite hungry and stopped regularly to chew on some grass or bamboo and got yelled at from the man behind.

As I rode, I tried to exert some control over the animal. I’d got some pointers from my mum and tried them out. The horse threw its head back in what I can only imagine was the equine equivalent of ‘fuck you’ because an instant afterwards, a spot of horse spit landed about two inches from my hand. Nice. As the route bottlenecked, I was able to make the horse go one side or the other of the horse in front, but other than that I might as well have been sat on the bony roof a particularly uncomfortable taxi. Without suspension. Or brakes. Or a driver.

When we trotted, it was fun and retaining balance was a challenge. I enjoyed trotting through muddy puddles as it gave me the feeling of being a crazy medieval rogue and also some satisfaction in that I wore shorts and didn’t get them ruined.

We reached a clearing and Tommy went off up some path or other and I wandered about, neither of us consenting to this action, you understand. We turned around and went back and did a bit more trotting and when finally we arrived back at the ranch, we disembarked and went into the building, which, as Antonio was very proud to point out, was built in 1104. It looked the part, built of bare stone with an ancient tree spreading its roots all over. It was like a barn, really with wooden beams and only two walls. God only knows how they close it off; perhaps they don’t. We sat at a table and were photographed again, this time drinking in the traditional Catalan fashion, which is to say that the drink was poured into our mouths from a receptacle that looked like a conical flask with a spout coming from the cone’s side, the top being the handle as well as where the drink was poured in from. Then, we had to protect our drinks from the flies before we were given a sausage on a skewer and were sent to cook it ourselves on the barbecue.

There were loads of cats around and as we approached the barbecue, one of the cats had stolen a raw sausage and was going head to head with a dog that clearly desired the sausage greatly. The cat eventually fled and ate the sausage because cats are clever and dogs are stupid. Once our sausages were done, we went back into the building to be given two thick slices of bread, a choice of ketchup or mustard and a serviette. We ate (that was out barbecue from the itinerary – one sausage!) and went, poking around the grounds for fifteen minutes. There were pigs, hens, cockerels, goats, peacocks, peahens and emus, all in large cages. I took photos and we were called back for the rodeo.

Clucking dental defect man stood in the middle of a very soft mud ring with a heavy-looking pony. People had goes of riding the pony and depending on what noises the clucking man made, the pony would buck or not. The one who could ride the pony (i.e., clucking dental defect man’s favourite) would win a bottle of bubbly to take back and drink in the name of our group. As it happened, an attractive Italian girl in her early 20s won the booze. Something to do with the way she allowed the clucking man to grab hold of her butt when she was falling off the pony. Total pervs, the lot of them. Still, it made for an amusing afternoon.

My mum enjoyed it the most; it was mainly for her pleasure that we went on the excursion, though we really enjoyed it too. I shared in her disappointment that the animals we rode were more or less automatons controlled by a goose-mouthed Spaniard. She used to ride and loves horses and did herself try to control her steed, only to be met with the feeling that she might as well have been a saddlebag. She had been on a similar excursion in Mexico with my dad a few years previous and said that the horses in Spain were of a much better quality. I can’t really comment as I don’t know enough about the subject, but I’m sure she does; mum knows best.

We went back to the hotel and had dinner and Tommy decided he wanted to go in the sea again. I decided I was too knackered and, as we had a busy day scheduled tomorrow, I’d just like to go to sleep now, thank you very much. This was unacceptable to Tommy and we ended up going to the beach anyway. I didn’t go in, mind, it was getting dark and there were lots of people walking about the promenade, but Tommy went in a little bit, then we came back and saved some crickets from certain death on the way to the hotel. We went for a drink and retired to bed.
Friday: Port Aventura.
We got up before the sun to be able to get to the bus station on time to be picked up by the Pujol vehicle that was to take us to Port Aventura, Universal Studio’s Mediterranean theme park located near Salou on the Costa Dorrada in Tarragona, some distance south of Barcelona.

Owing to a dodgy stomach, I disturbed the cleaner by having to use the loo before we left. She didn’t look impressed, but I had the squitts and needed to go, so I left my mum and Tommy watching the sunrise and walked across wet floor to clear my bowels. We found the bus station without much of a problem because I’d remembered the way yesterday when we passed it to go to see the oily perverts and their equine machinations at Ranxo Mestres. There was a noticeable chill in the air and some crickets were still singing as slowly, Blanes woke up to a clear and bright Friday morning. We went into the bus station building, all modern and glass, into the small café run by a wide and little, friendly-looking bespectacled grey-haired lady. We piggishly had a large pain au chocolat each, with a cup of tea (coffee for my addicted mother) and then Tommy and I both suffered stomach pains again. We found the loos but the door was locked. My mum got the key, but it was to the ladies’, so Tommy and I went in there. If you’ve never been into a ladies’ loo, then really you’re not missing much. It’s the same as the men’s except it’s cleaner and there’s nowhere to parade your cock.

We waited outside after giving the key back and the coach didn’t arrive. We sat on a cold stone bench and feared piles when a Peugeot 306 pulled up. A man in his mid-to-late 30s with dark glasses and darker hair got out and approached us.
“Port Aventura?” He asked, mysteriously.
“The seagull has laid its egg and the stoat is approaching the refrigerator,” I’d like to have said, equally mysteriously, but instead we just said, “yeah.”
“Come with me, please,” he said and Tommy and my mum got in the back leaving Muggins here to get into the front with him. I didn’t know who he was, he’d shown no ID, but there we were, in a car with a total stranger in a foreign country: we’d been abducted. I considered the situation carefully and thought that the odds were in our favour, however I didn’t really fancy our chances if he pulled into somewhere with loads of his friends waiting.

He phoned up someone and spoke crazy, crazy Spanish. Spanish is a funny language because the sentences don’t seem to end. A person can just talk and talk without ever stopping then, as suddenly as they began, they’ll stop dead. When two Spaniards talk it’s like tag team assault on the ears and just as one abruptly stops, the other picks up and carries on, probably so that the first can breathe. I gleaned that we were going to Calella from what he said on the phone and presumed that we’d be picked up by a coach from there. It was so, we boarded a coach and fell asleep for the two-and-a-half hour journey south and arrived in Port Aventura at about 10.30. The coach driver held up a card that said “Dépature 18.30” and we walked towards the entrance.
We’d been talking about Dragon Khan for a while when we were awake on the coach and previous to the day and we spoke about it again when we entered the park. It’s visible from most of Port Aventura on account of it being absolutely huge. When you ride it, you go upside down eight times which is a world record available to glance at in a copy of the Guinness book of such, and sounds like a real laugh. We went there first. Well, you have to, don’t you? The queues weren’t bad at this time; we must have been standing there for about five minutes before being strapped in and whisked off. It’s the first drop that gets your stomach going the most, the following loops and corkscrews are comparatively unexciting but the whole experience was thundering and packed with people screaming, breathing, then screaming again. Neither Tommy nor I really screamed that much but chose to do so because everyone else was. It was over before we knew it really and it was a bit of a let down in that way because, for its size, you’d expect to be on it longer. When we came off, we were totally incapable of walking. It was as if our legs had been swapped around, perhaps even with other people’s. We got back to my mum who had kept the bag safe whilst we were flung about and we all commented in what a scorcher the day had turned into.

We saw little chairs hanging on chains from a disc that span gently round and decided that it looked quite fun, so we went on that next. We got on, went round in circles for about two minutes and got off slightly bored. It wouldn’t be bad for little kids and those with nervous dispositions, but those prone to falling asleep when bored should approach with caution. It looked very pretty, but I did notice that the schpeil about not pushing or kicking anyone else on a nearby chair wasn’t in English at first, only when the ride stopped did they tell us not to kill each other.

We came off and watched the Oriental dragon fountain – for Port Aventura is split into five different zones, a bit like the Crystal Maze, really. They are: Mediterranea, filled with cafés and restaurants with a little radio-controlled boat area, numerous shops and so on, all built to look, well, Mediterranean, which must have been a task; where did they get their inspiration from? China, where we were now, had a pleasing air of commercialist mystery, plinky-plonky piped koto music coming from selected stones in its very own Great Wall, with very Chinese-looking huts selling – and I counted this – no less than ten different T-shirts with “I survived Dragon Khan” printed on them, along with zip-fronted waterproofs, fleeces, sleeveless tops, mugs, plastic bottles, key chains and a cuddly toy, didn’t they do well? Polynesia is a zone with exotic straw huts and totem poles, the rocks emit a soundtrack of chants with ethnic drumbeats, the plants that line the paths are banana palms and the like. I liked Polynesia, it was like the Aztec zone with Richard O’brian prancing around chanting, “it’s a lock-in!” I think they had some good rides, too. Mexico was a little too similar to the Far West zone, I think and I found it virtually impossible to distinguish between them. Far West was a little different, in that I remember it for its main street with Old West-style shops, but Mexico I don’t remember at all.

Next we went to El Diablo, Tren De La Mina or The Devil, Mine Train. It looked all right and that’s about it, really: it was all right. The queue was short and had it not been, we probably would have felt a bit cheated. It was quite unmemorable and rather jerky, a bit like the Rattlesnake in Chessington, but without the unfeasibly tight corners. From the highest point on El Diablo, we noticed what seemed to be a huge, huge rollercoaster some way off in the Far West area. The design was much the same as El Diablo with its faux wooden structure. As soon as we got off, we made our way there and queued for approximately half an hour, which was double what the waiting times board stated. We queued for 30 minutes in the scorching heat; people ahead of us were giving up, taking their flustered and tearful children with them.

As we got to the top, a little girl was refused entry to the ride because she was too short. Tommy and I agreed that since there’s a sign outside saying how tall you have to be, it was very unkind of the parents to make them wait in the queue for so long for nothing. Anyway, we got in (eventually) and went round for what felt like about fifteen seconds then stopped and the ride had finished. It barely quickened my pulse. “That can’t be it,” said Tommy. It was.
“Well, I feel short-changed,” I said. We disembarked and realised that the effect was really very clever. This was, in fact, two rollercoasters stuck together to look like one massive one. We queued for the other part, Stampida, the idea of which was a race and on the way to the queue, you selected either the blue wagon or the red wagon. We chose red because it’s my favourite colour and, as someone had written in Spanish on one of the notice boards, it’s the colour of menstruation. Yummy.

When, after about 45 minutes, we eventually got on, it was quite a good ride. Maybe my opinion of rollercoasters is now tainted because after being dropped from 300 feet everything seems a little dull, even Dragon Khan. It was quite a furious ride, Stampida, and quite enjoyable and I liked the race effect and it appeared that both ‘wagons’ went on slightly different courses. We came off and found my mum who was sitting in the shade looking like she needed a damned large Coke. This we had each, along with three bits of KFC-clone chicken, a generous portion of chips, and a side salad, all for around 40€, not too bad considering how much they hike the prices up in these places. It’s certainly cheaper than EuroDisney. Where we ate was a chicken place, it was, in fact called Chicken Stampida, and I liked it, the idea of stampeding chickens. [continued] 

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