Monte Carlo (Monaco)

Hi Again. Just to let you know I have added new pictures to the gallery (and video's to Facebook), of our recent adventures in small countries (Andorra and Monaco). As a F1 fan, my highlight was first walking, then driving Heidlehoff, round the F1 track in Monaco.. We also mixed in well with the Ferrari's, Porsche's, and Bentleys outside the Monte Carlo casino.

Benicassim festival (Spain)

I write this entry in my diary as we are attempting to force Heidlehoff (the Cavi) up the Pyrenees mountains and into Andorra, our month in Spain pretty much behind us. Spain has given us the opportunity to meet some great new friends, in particular at Benicassim festival....

Benicassim festival is pretty much exactly opposite to Glastonbury, in that it is sunny rather than rainy. It is also located on a beach town, meaning sleep is best done on the beach during the day, whilst the music runs from 8pm to 8am through the night. The actual music festival only runs for 4 days but camping and general partying is over a week long. We were lucky in that we set up camp next to a great group of English people (I hope to see many of you in a few weeks at Leeds festival), as well as a cool Spanish couple. As for the festival itself, I'll keep it sort and simplify - basically this was one of the best weeks of my life. It rocked! I really really recommend this festival to everyone.... Oh and the bands were good too :-)

San Fermín Festival (Spain)

The next stop on our trip was the festival of San Fermín in Pamplona, Spain. Probably better known as the Running of the Bulls. Basically this is a 9 day festival with bull fights, firework displays, live bands and all night general partying throughout the city. Most importantly there is a bull run everyday at 8am. The bull run takes place primarily to move the bulls to the bull ring for the afternoon fight. The ´running´ part came about many years ago when one crazy dude decided to actually run the route with the bulls. Today hundreds of crazy people follow his example. Andy, Stef and I were them crazy people on the first day - along with lots of Aussie´s from our campsite. We were slightly disturbed by the naming of some parts of the course; such as ´Dead mans corner´ and ´Death tunnel´. As it happened we needn´t have cared - as soon as the rocket indicating the release of the bulls was fired we were off, and actually beat the bulls into the ring. Unfortunately one person did die today during this run, at ´Dead mans corner´. However he was the first in over a decade.

On our last day at the festival we hired a balcony above ´Dead mans corner´ to watch the run (Video is on Facebook). The bulls certainly look less scary from above :-) We spent our last evening watching the fireworks from Pamplona´s main park, before driving to Barcelona with a new passenger in tow - an Aussie named Luke...

Southside (Germany) & Glastonbury (England) Festivals

Festival season started early with a surprise phone call from our good friends Nora and Eti. They were on-route to Southside festival, Germany and suggested we join them. To which we thought long and hard for at least a second before the unanimous decision was made. To Germany we rolled...

Southside is a relatively small festival which attracts some great bands; the highlights for me included Flogging Molly, The Chemical Brothers, The Womats and The Enemy. Annoyingly someone stole my wallet whilst we were dancing to "everything is going wrong, but we´re so happy" - JoyDivision by the Wombats. Luckily as I´m pretty much living a tramps life it must have been the most empty wallet steal in history!:-) Sad to leave, we successfully managed a 1000km drive in a day - in order to catch our ferry to Glastonbury.

Glasto was immense! If you haven´t been - go. Even if you don´t like music you will have a great time, there is just so much to do. I actually spent most of the days in the comedy / circus tents, and my nights in the Jazz tent. My festival highlight was a 200 person only Wombats gig in a tiny tent. My many hours queuing was rewarded with eventual entry. Jay-Z was without doubt the best headliner and blew me away (- after making my way through a massively packed crowd, in an unsuccessful attempt to reach my old boss, Katie). It was however great to meet up with my ex-collegues; Alistair and Chris, and their Friends.

Interlaken (Switzerland)

Wow – it seems to have been a while since my last contact, so I’ll play a bit of catch up and tell two stories today. I’ll begin at the beginning – Interlaken. Now this is certainly the most foreigner filled (aka tourist) place that we have visited; but that is for very good reason….it rocks! Interlaken literally means in-between two lakes (and lots of mountains and glaciers too). These lakes are the cleanest in Switzerland. The fantastic location means that it’s ideal for a large number of sports (skydiving, paragliding, canyoning etc). We could only afford the cheapest – rafting; but this was immense. I certainly wish to go back one day – but with plenty of money.

On our 3rd day (NB: def the most time we have spent in one place) we visited Brienz, a town on one of the lakes. We saw a waterfall a little way up a mountain and decided to go for a free shower. Now somehow we missed the waterfall and soon found ourselves heading to the top. Well, we couldn’t very well turn back, so found some sticks and made for the summit like proper hikers. It soon became apparent that we were the only muppets doing so - everyone else was going downwards (and annoyingly we later discovered a train that takes you up = doh!).However we did finally make the top, and enjoyed a deserved cold beer 1202 m above sea level. To make up for our foolishness we found an even better waterfall we could drive to; and did so on our 4th and final day before leaving Interlaken.