Alicante Adventure Part 1

There’s something a bit odd heading off for an adventure that involves 8 blokes and me. The only two people that I truly know in the group are Martin & Brian.

Captain of this motley crew is Tom Prentice. Bless, he’s done all the organisation for the trip.

Then there’s Aziz, Peter, Ian, Tom (Tate), and Richard.

We, (with the exception of ‘farmer Tom’) had a wee hurl out together earlier in the year. To assess our ability to ride and, I guess the ability to tolerate each other. Good plan.

We shouldn’t have worried. The banter was flowing as soon as we met up this morning at silly o’clock in Starbucks at Edinburgh Airport. I believe each of us gave and received our fair share of blows.

The whole SleazyJet experience was, frankly, stress free and uneventful. The last time I flew with them, it was an all-out cattle market and a rush to get to a seat. Any seat. Quite civilised now; it may have taken 20 years for SleazyJet to get it right, but it was just fine.

I know there were a lot of Zeds on the flight. That was after a (public) ritual humiliation of the token lassie in the group. It’s ok, it wasn’t a full plane, there were one or two seats empty. Just as well I have strong shoulders. All in good fun.

I have no idea how long the flight took. I was asleep during most of it. The rest of the time I was reading Guy Martin’s new book.

The next bit was collecting our minibus. The location of this vehicle bore no resemblance to the map Tom was given.

Eventually after dismantling the back seats and after 6 ‘adults’ trying to put the off-the-rail seats back in place, Captain Tom navigated his way out the airport. Then, just when we thought things were going quite well, went on a re-visit to the airport, just to be totally sure that the SatNav truly didn’t have a clue.

There must have been nothing worse than having 8 (IAM) back seat drivers to contend with. After all, the start of our navigation wasn’t that smooth.

Eventually, we got to the bike shop where we were going to rent our bikes. All 8 of us signed our lives away. *note to self* don’t drop the darn bike! Ironically, I bought a pair of winter socks. Don’t sell winter socks in Scotland, obviously.

We pick up the bikes tomorrow. Our villa is ace, lots of space, fab pool, hot tub, ping pong table (found the ball, desperately seeking bats) outside cooking area too. Dinner was a surprising success. We went out for Italian and got Spanish-ish. Very tasty indeed, we all gave it a big thumbs up.

I would like to say it’s early to bed, however, we had a great laugh and we got a wee (accidental) tour of one of our routes on the way back…. All I can say is; can’t wait. There were tonnes of chevrons and a lovely surface to play on.

Early start tomorrow, so it’s night night from me. Can’t wait to meet my wee trusty steed in the morning.