Spain 2014 - Day 8 - The pilgrimage continues

At breakfast we were talking about how noisy the hotel was, Mark mentioned the people talking in the corridor, Tim said that the kids downstairs were making a racket and Cheesy moaned about a continuous droning noise that had been going for hours. Mark and Tim looked at each other and started laughing as Tim had decided to dry his socks that he'd washed and had jammed the hair dryer on to get them dry...

We checked out and got back on the bikes for a fast 3 hour ride to Longono. Partway there Mark noticed that Tims number plate had gone missing so we backtracked a couple of miles but couldn't find it. Mark and Cheesy were riding a long slowly coming up with a plan when a police bike went past, blasted his horn and gave us a non-Highway Code approved hand gesture. Not been told off for going too slowly before!

We passed a procession of old minis who were waving at us as we went past. Mark managed a high five with one of them which was pretty cool. 

There was a breakthrough today, Cheesy managed to get through a toll booth on his own without calling for help. Steve was already off his bike running to help though and was a little bit disappointed Cheesy had sussed it. 

We stopped for a drink at a wier and Tim and Steve went wading in their boots to cool off even though the temperature had dropped to a lowly 30C.

We then pushed on lunch free across some fast challenging bends through the hills and checked in at our hotel in Longono. Tim managed to lose one of his gloves on the way to the car park but later recovered it. It's not his day for losing things, they say things come in threes so we'll take bets for what goes missing next.

We opted for an early start so grabbed a bite to eat at a knock off KFC joint called Chic Chic Chicken and then started the walk into town, Mark's best & only full meal so far. The hotel Mark had booked was in the suburbs so it was a bit of a trek, but as there was a church we hadn't seen in the centre of town, everyone was excited.

The church was quite odd, very high ceilings with mist at the top, but the best part was the statues of Jesus with a bazooka. It seems the holy wars were more violent than we thought!

We had a stroll around town and came across an interesting swim ware shop, Pink Leader took particular interest in this and the rest of the group had to stop him purchasing some new attire.

We sat down to watch the football when the heavens opened, we're talking Noah's Ark style rain so we took shelter in a bar. Tim convinced us it was just a passing shower but we started to doubt that when it was still thundering 45 mins later.

When it finally stopped we headed to one of the bar districts and had some tapas, Mark even got to eat some, but it was Tommo who was in his element. Cheesy 'accidentally' knocked over a glass of wine onto Tims shorts and white t-shirt and Tim is convinced that this was revenge for soaking him in the fountain yesterday. Cheesy wasn't available for comment but his representatives declined all involvement.

Rain came again pinning us in the bar just as another bunch of English entered so we chatted to them for a while and one guy said that Tommo in their group kept making them stop for boring stuff. We said that Steve did that in our group except with churches and he said "oh he's the Tommo of your group us he?", how true was that

The rain eased again so we switched bars. Cheesy spotted a guy wearing the worlds worst wig so he pointed this out to us albeit a little loudly and the guy heard and ran off in embarrassment. The place sold sidre and after learning about this on last years trip Steve was keen to show Cheesy. We ordered some sidre and the barman did the stupid poring thing but only gave us about an inch in each glass, so it wasn't exactly the thirst quenching drink you'd have back home. It was ok though as it was like paint stripper so no need for much more.

Our final bar of the night just sold mushrooms, everyone but Mark tucked in, just in case they were the magic variety. They weren't, but we took a dragon home to Candy Land where 7 mermaids greeted us and we went to bed in our hollowed out pumpkins.

Piss stops were 2-1 to Tim, they must be just about even now.

2 days until the 100th entry and we're a little disappointed by the lack of ideas from our readership.