Rocket Festival, Saturday

We completed our Friday night with a 0200 Main Stage rendezvous with an Italian gypsy band called Circus Abusivo, easily the best thing on the MS since the festival began (from what I'm told - I spent most of Friday interviewing people, editing the interviews and sending them to my old work, BBC Radio Bristol) then completed our night's revelling with a bounce around to Village Disco in naff Ozzie form in Cantina Galactica. "Nellie The Elephant" and Rod Stewart were on the playlist, you couldn't fault it really. We got back to the van some time after three, after stopping at a stall for chocolate and churros. When in Spain...

Later that same day, we emerged after a reasonably decent amount of sleep and headed straight for the healing field where I had a shiatsu massage from a lovely chap called Alan, with whom we'd got chatting the day before. He's lived in Spain since the eighties, when he joined the hippie exodus fleeing the horrors of Thatcher's Britain. He did a great job, I've had hardly a twinge from my dodgy right arm ever since.

Much of Saturday daytime was spent ambling around the site in that time-honoured festival way, but we did stop off in the Lux tent to watch an improv band comprising Clyde, the ukele-playing frontman, a harmonising woman with a puppet, an Italian playing a drum and Barry The Box, busily bashing away, as he had during a gap in the music at Cantina Galactica on Thursday night. What they lacked in preparation they made up with enthusiasm and the gambit of giving the audience three bottles of home-made wine to share (providing someone had a corkscrew - Theo did) guaranteed them a rousing reception. They did their last number among their spectators, with the grand finale involving everyone spinning on the spot then collapsing into a group hug.
We greatly enjoyed Lazy Habits, a white UK hiphop crew in Cantina Galactica and willingly received one of the free CDs they gave out from the stage (this habit of bribing the audience is something I would tend to encourage...there was a lot of it going on at the Rocket). After that, a fabulously costumed drum'n'bass rendition of the Wife Of Bath's tale by the Eat Prunes Collective in the Lux tent caught our attention - quality stuff.

Possibly the most enjoyable Main Stage act came next - Rrradio Gee, a self-styled pikey band who got the early evening crowd madly a-jigging to their fast-paced Irish folk-rock. I was so hot after all that jumping around, I opted to take a free shower when the water-spraying fire engine came by to damp down the dust in the main arena. If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine myself at Glastonbury.

A Bristol band, Zen Hussies were next and they were most enjoyable with their mixture of ska and swing (they finished their set with a Christmas song set in Melksham - suitably random).
After that, it was back to Sheena to get into fancy dress. The theme was space, so we fashioned some alien costumes out of tin foil, empty water bottles, starry glitter and UK forces issue light sticks, which were included when we bought our van. The effect was pretty decent, we thought and it certainly got some heads turning when we went back onto the site some time after 11pm.
It was noticeably busier as loads of Spaniards had arrived, as predicted by the festival regulars.
We enjoyed the Spanish band, Muchachito Bombero Infuerno, the first act I've seen to include an artist working on a painting as part of the gig (mind you, the set went on so long, Coldcut, who were on next, were an hour late starting) and we loved Beardyman, the champion beatboxer, who played to a packed Dance Tent.

Other highlights included attempting to reunite a guy called Rob with a Swedish girl called Lena - he'd met her in Malaga a couple of days earlier and had come to the Rocket with the express intention of tracking her down. We asked for an announcement to go out over the PA, but we still don't know if he found her.

We also met Kerine and Andy, attracted initially attracted by the excellence of their fancy dress as we all stopped at a stall for food. They gave us a flyer for an "alternative living" campsite on the Costa del Sol, which seemed like a good place for us to go and hide our damaged van for a while, so we resolved to give it a try.

The other great part about Saturday night was simply hanging out with Fran and Pete, our mates from the Grenada campsite and other buddies they'd collected, including Ayesha, who'd travelled to the festival from London alone after splitting up with her boyfriend a couple of weeks earlier. It was Fran's birthday, so much toasting involving Jack Daniels and coke went on - and what a place for a party! We caught a couple of songs from Coldcut before calling it a night sometime towards 5am.

first impressions

We're at the Rocket Festival and it's fabulous! Not much is going on yet - it's still Friday morning - though we had a lovely boogie at the Space themed Cantina Galactica last night as well as meeting lots of very friendly people.

Anyway, while Kate is off conducting various interviews she has instructed me to write a piece for BBC online which goes into far more detail

They credited it to Kate but I wrote it and took them snaps. What's mine is hers now, apparently.

strange meetings

"Theo!" came the shout down Calle de Reyes Catholics in Grenada.

Expecting it to be some other Bristolian heading, like us, to the Rocket Festival, we were both surprised to meet instead Andy and Tracy, the Kiwi couple we had met on the campsite outside Burgos. Their itinerary had brought them to Granada and later the same campsite as us.

Our neightbours at the campsite turned out to be from Bristol, Pete and Fran, over here to celebrate her birthday. A very convivial evening was spent in their company and we were later joined by Andy and Tracy, which cheered us up greatly after the depressing morning at the garage.

Tomorrow we're going to drive - very carefully - to Rocket.

Bugger

Tomorrow (or possibly today depending on when I post this) I am probably going to have to have the following conversation:

"hola! Hablar ingles?"
"no."
"Vale. Se puede reponer el parabrisas trasero de nos cochecama, por favor?"
"tal vez. Que le pasa?"
"choca con un arbol ayer."

Laughter will undoubtedly ensue at this point, followed by sucking of teeth, scratching of head, rapid burst of incomprehensible Spanish, hand gestures which we will probably interpret as indicating that our Madza is not a common make so a replacement rear windscreen wont be easy to find.
I hit an olive tree parking in the campsite. We now have a hole (temporarily plugged with mosquito net) and crazy paving effect in the rear view.

Bugger.

Later update:

Laughter did not ensue. As feared the Mazda E2200 was not sold in Spain, and indeed isn´t that common. The insurance company is on the case but finding a new rear windscreen may take a while. Car Glass (the Spanish version of Autoglass) did a decent job of taping up the window, so we´ll probably just find a nice campsite by the beach and hole up until we get furtehr instructions.

After the Rocket Festival, of course!

the distractions of being connected to the wider world

we spent so much time online at Cordoba that we never actually got around to writing a proper blog entry about our visit.

In summary then:

- got lost
- found old Jewish quarter
- got lost
- found Mezquita, the Mosque with a Cathedral in the middle. Both of us totally bowled over.
- got lost
- had coffee
- got lost
- had Montilla
- failed to find decent tapas; an utter travesty
- found youth hostel and had slap up meal
- got lost
- found campsite

photos from Seville

In the campsite at Cordoba we managed to find some free wifi, so we've taken the opportunity to upload some photos from Seville (see below) and add some to past postings, so do scroll through to check them out even if you've already read the blogs....

Beer and loathing in Seville

We were starting to hate Seville way before we actually got there.

The drive was epic - we left the Lisbon campsite at 8am and hit the outskirts of Seville - hideous modern appartment blocks - at 6pm which, even given the fact we lost an hour when we crossed the border, made it the longest drive of the trip thus far and an epic by anyone's standards.

An hour and a half later and we were still trying to find a campsite, which plainly has been buried under an airport extension or one of those modern buildings. Half hints and a single sign on a roundabout were the only clues to back up the road atlas and guidebook's assertion that it existed. We were already getting testy with Seville by this point, but it was about 20 minutes later after being stuck on ringroad hell and discovering, thanks to the complete absence of signs, that we'd been driving away from Seville for the past 15kms that the loathing set in. This was, you note, before we'd even got there.

The absence of a campsite, the pending sunset and the wind and rain drove us into the centre of the city past honking taxis and psychopathic scooters. We hit the old town and parking Sheena semi-legally in a plaza (safety in numbers we figured), dashed for the nearest hostel. Closed.

The second had one room left, a twin, with roaches in the bathroom and a smell of fish in the corridor. We took it. We were that tired. We decided to make the most of being in the lively Santa Cruz district on a Saturday night; get some food, take a nap, shower and hit the town again, perhaps trying to move Sheena to a more obviously legit parking space. However, as previously blogged, we can stick to plans for about as long as I can hold a tune. A chance meeting with the lovely Nora (a German living in Seville) and the ebullient David (Irish friend visiting) led to free flamenco, free flowing beer and a fine evening out. Amazing luck as without Nora's local knowledge we would never have found it - thanks for the fun times you two!

We like Seville a lot more now we've actually seen a bit of it. Hopefully by the end of tomorrow we'll be thoroughly smitten.

Lisbon: planning to plan

Kate and I suck at planning things.

Ok, so our wedding went pretty well - we're not saying that things go badly when we plan them, it's just that we seem to be rubbish at sticking to plans. We're too impetuous, too easily distracted and too prone to improvise. For example, originally our European travel plans hadn't included Spain and Portugal AT ALL - now we're spending a month here (all largely because of a thread we saw on the CHOKE forum). As a result we had hardly any plans, and hadn't even got around to purchasing a proper road atlas for the Iberian peninsular until we got to Bilbao.

Today was another great example of us making plans, not sticking to them, making more plans, not sticking to those either, but of generally having a lovely, if footsore, day anyway.


We're in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, a south-facing port on the Tajo river. Our plan had been to get up early, have breakfast, head into town before 9, wander around and see some of the sights, then come back for a late lunch and siesta before heading back into Lisbon for a night out in the big city. We started well, but by 12.30 we didn't really feel we'd seen much by way of the sights, just some lovely narrow, cobbled streets with tall town houses on the sides and cafe tables in the middle, opening out to big pracas named after various kings and explorers. We did find an ornate street elevator, originally steam powered and a cute funicular tramway, but we decided it was too early to eat out and anyway we weren't that bothered about a night on the tiles. So we bought a day rider (might have been a good plan to get one earlier, but never mind) and headed to the riverside Belem district, where several of Lisbon's best monuments and palaces were to be found.



After changing our plans regarding lunch a couple of times, we found a charming little pavement cafe where we managed to assemble a reasonably decent vegetarian meal from various entree and soup options. Monuments checked out, street art spotted, ice cream eaten, feet beginning to ache, we resolved to do the rest of our sightseeing by tram and bus to make the best use of our four-euro tickets. Inevitably we ended up on a different tram to the one we planned to take, but Kate's instinct was right as we were rewarded by gorgeous views on the castle circular in a splendid old fashioned vehicle with sash windows and leather sunscreens, polished wood and ample chances to exchange greetings with pedestrians and people in passing trams.

Naturally our plans to return to the campsite via a variety of Metro trains and buses were altered, changed and rearranged several times and two missed stops later, we made it back. I had planned to get our washing in from earlier then cook, but Kate had other plans, hence she's cooking and I am blogging. About plans.