San Sebastian and back to Blighty

After the BBK festival it was great to get to a nice hotel peel off the clothes we had been wearing for 3 days and have a warm shower and shave, bliss! We headed to the nearest sandy beach and promptly fell asleep for most of Sunday afternoon.

Beautiful beaches 

After a good sleep in the sunshine and feeling a bit more like ourselves, we set off to find a German bar that we had read about to watch the World Cup final. We gave our England shirts one last outing, after all it should have been England playing in this final! We settled down with a couple of good German beers and a meal of pork knuckle, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. We enjoyed the match and were pleased that it didn't go to penalties. Germany were the deserved winners and have played some good football throughout the tournament.

The following day the only cleanish shirt I could find was one I'd picked up at Real Madrid. Bob offered some sage advice "thas  not wearing that int  Basque country, thall get tha ead kicked in" ignoring the advice and feeling brave, I wandered the Basque streets without being attacked or abused. For lunch we called into a tapas bar, where the owner noticed the shirt and started talking to us about football - that's Basque football, Real Sociadad and Athletico Bilbao, not Madrid and Spanish football! It turns out that the President's of Real Sociadad and Athletico Bilbao were in the bar along with Javier Clemente a famous player for Bilbao who has coached at Sociadad and was the current Libya manager. He wanted to introduce us to them but first I had to remove the Madrid shirt! So we had to do a quick swap, I took off the Madrid shirt and put on Bobs shirt and Bob put on his new Basque Country shirt and every one was happy. Photos, and discussions about football followed. Great aftermoon. Fortune follows the brave, great idea to wear the Madrid shirt in the capital of the Basque country! 

The airing of the '66 shirts until 2018!

We found a bar in the evening selling 10 beers on tap and lots more in bottles. We finished our last evening with a 10% De Molen 'Hel & Verdoemenis' imperial stout, very nice and a great beer to finish the holiday on. 

The following morning, Tue, we had a quick dash back to Bilbao to get the ferry to Portsmouth. There had to be one last incident and it happened on the ferry. 

We had found a nice corner on the top deck out of the wind and bathed in sunshine. We were quite isolated but after a while we stood up and looked around, the deck was completely empty, all the chairs tidied away not a soul in site. That's odd Bob said, where's everyone gone. It turns out there had been a medical emergency and all the outside decks had been cleared to allow a helicopter to land. As we turned the corner I think its fair to say the French crew who were stopping people coming on the deck were quite surprised to see two mad English men appear from the very deck they thought they'd already cleared. There were a few 'sacrebleu's' expressed by both parties!

The calm before the storm

The crossing was very smooth, we arrived back in Portsmouth at 10am Wed morning and decided to head to a Wetherspoons for breakfast. We've met so many really friendly and helpful people while we've been away, so it was disappointing to be greated with a group of totally miserable uninterested and unhelpful people in Wetherspoons. Welcome back to England! 

We arrived home after completing 4112 miles and travelling through 9 countries. Its been a fantastic 6 weeks, we've enjoyed watching the world cup in different countries and all the banter that goes with it. We've found really good beer in some of the most unexpected places, but above all we've had some really good laughs - usually after a few beers.

The trip was great but it was good to get back home especially to see Alison, Ellie and Meg, and catch up on all the stuff that's been happening.

So what next? Well Sheffield United's pre season starts this weekend, Bob is looking forward to the season with great anticipation and has his coach booked to Burton Albion on Saturday. On Monday I fly out to Florida with Alison, Ellie and Meg for thee weeks, travelling down the Keys, swimming with Dolphins snd visiting some theme parks. Watch this space!