The journals of a traveling rollerblader: Barcelona March 2008

In March of 2008 I flew to Barcelona with a big group of friends for 7 days of rollerblading madness. During the trip I kept a journal of each day, which I’ve written up into one long story. Enjoy it!

You can use the following links to skip to a certain part of the journal:
Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Comments, Edits

The people present on the trip were:

• Andreas Larfors – Dre/Me
• Luke Welch – Luke
• Aaron Ford – Fish
• Mark Worner – Mark/Worner/Worndog
• Matt Brown – Matty/Thug
• Guy Millership – Guy
• Wiggy Wig – Wiggy
• Doug Gammons – Doug
• Aaron Polhill – Polhill
• James Rendall – Reynolds
• Jamie Pearce-Mariner – Jamie
• Catherine Searle – Cat

I awoke on Saturday morning at 5:30am and trudged through the house to the kitchen, grabbing a bowl of Weetabix Minis and sitting down to munch away on them. Luke had slightly more trouble getting out of bed.

Considering he was still asleep, a sharp tug to the right leg was in order. This, coupled with being told that he had 15 minutes until we were leaving for the airport got him out of bed fairly quickly. Once we got in the car, it was a quick 30 mins to the airport, and we arrived to find half of the group standing in the check-in queue.

It became apparent that the security control were turning away anyone who attempted to bring skates on in their hand luggage (as we did last year), so after checking in their luggage, they had gone upstairs to the departure lounge, only to be told to go back downstairs to check-in their skates. At this point, a very rapid re-packing of the luggage was required, as Luke and I moved skates from our hand luggage into our check-in luggage, and clothes into our hand luggage to stay below the 15kg limit. Worner had no room for his skates in his hand luggage in the first place, so was about to check-in his skates wrapped in a plastic bag each. I thought this was fucking stupid, and told him to put his skates into my bag, and carry some of my clothing instead.

After sorting this out and looking behind me expecting to see Luke, it turned out that instead of joining the queue and packing while he queued, he’d decided to stand beside the queue, and not begin queueing until he’d finished packing. He was now stood at the back of the queue, while the rest of us had finished checking in [Note: this was the first time we had to wait for Luke].

I had yet to get any euros, and I had no cash, so I decided to go to the travelex desk and draw out some euros on my debit card. After paying £134 for €150 (ripoff!) and getting it all sorted, Luke had finally checked in and arrived at the travelex desk. He didn’t have any euros either, so he set about changing some cash, but only decided to get €10, for which there seemed no obvious reason.

After waiting for Luke, we proceeded to the departure lounge, for which we had to pass through the security desk. Jamie was carrying a knife, with which the security staff weren’t too impressed, but we made it through without any problems. We then did the usual airport thing, and sat down and awaited the announcement of the boarding of our flight. I felt slightly out of place as the people who I actually knew before the trip left me with the people whom I didn’t. After walking between gates, attempting to guess which one it would be (meaning we would be at the front of the line), the gate number was announced and we realised that we were in completely the wrong place. Like bees flying towards honey, the whole departure lounge swarmed towards the gate, which left us right at the back of the line. Fish and Matty had no problems with this however, as they’d obtained priority boarding passes due to having checked in at 5 in the morning. After queueing for 5 minutes or so, we realised that instead of standing at the back of the queue, we were stood at the point where the queue went around a corner, but with real gangbanger steez (more on this later!) we managed to push our way into the queue, ending up several places ahead of the people previously in front of us.

After getting on the plane, we lifted off, flew around for a bit and then landed at Girona airport.

We got off the plane, walked the short distance to the terminal and went through the ever stringent Spanish passport checks. Everything was looking good until we got to the baggage collection belt. The bag in which Matty had checked in his skates came along, but it was open, and contained only one skate. A short moment of panic followed, as Matty almost fainted on the spot, but a little kid tugged his arm and shouted “I can see the other one!”. Matty got both his skates, not believing his lucky escape, and we made our way to the bus ticket stand, where everyone (except Doug) bought return tickets to Barcelona.

After getting on the bus and watching the Spanish countryside fly past, we arrived at Barcelona bus station, at which point Dre took the lead and guided the group towards the nearest metro station. This is where Polhill made the mistake of taking charge of the group. He had obtained directions to the hostel, but they were directions from a metro stop about 8 or 9 stops from where we were. Instead of looking at the map and realising that the hostel was a mere 2 stops from where we were, he pushed on and was determined to follow the directions 100%. The directions would have involved us going 8 or 9 stops on the red line, changing to the blue line for 5 or 6 stops, changing to the yellow line for 3 or 4 stops and then getting off at Jaume I. About 6 stops down the red line, I spotted that going one stop to Urquinaona, changing to the yellow line, and then going one stop would also take us to Jaume I. I told the group, got everyone off the train and moved to the opposite side of the platform, caught a train in the opposite direction, changed to the yellow line and finally arrived at Jaume I.

As we surfaced at Jaume I, Mark rang Adam, who knew the way from the metro stop to the hostel. After 5 minutes, he appeared out of nowhere, and took us a stonethrow over the road into the hostel.

The hostel foyer was a fresh green colour, with random murals, photos and decorations everywhere. We checked in, and proceeded to pay for our stay, which is when Luke realised that he didn’t have any euros, and would have to get some before he could pay for his stay. Everyone headed up to the room, and while most of us were in a single room, Jamie, Cat and Fish were in a room of their own, and Adam was in a completely different room to everyone else.

Whilst unpacking, Luke was fretting about his euro issue, but eventually the woman behind the desk calmly accepted that Luke would have to pay for his stay that night, and we left the hostel, heading for La Rambla. Walking down Carrer De Ferran, which led to La Rambla, we decided some food was in order, and we stopped in a small bakery, and flooded through the entrance.

Ordering was done in spanglish, with phrases such as “Uno Doughnut” and “Dos Bread Rolls”. After everyone had got their fill, we continued to La Rambla, where we wandered up, then down, and then back up after getting directions to the University Plaza ledges.

To add to the lost tourist look of our group, Luke was wandering into random places asking to change some money. After waiting for Luke (again) to get his money changed (which he did, with a little bit of help from Adam) we made our way to the University Plaza, where we had a quick skate whilst being hassled by a group of skateboarders.

About 30 minutes after we got there, a police car pulled up nearby, and after skating for another 10 minutes we left, concerned that we might lose our skates on the first day.

We got on the metro and headed for Vila Olympica, where the (rather perfect) heaven/twin tower/olympica ledges are located. After getting off the metro, we were all a bit confused about the weather, which had gone from sunshine and no wind to overcast with gale force winds.

After looking at the infamous Terry Sommerville gap, we made our way over to the ledges.

The session got underway pretty quickly, and before you could say “Aaron Polhill kills shit” he was pulling out truespin kindgrinds.

Matty ‘Gangbanger’ Brown did a run consisting of 270 bs unity, followed by a truespin front savannah, both of which were switch. Aaron and I didn’t fancy the tech battle, so resorted to playing with power grinds. With the crazy spanish winds powering us, we pulled out some speedy fs/bs royales, souls and topsouls. As the ledges got a bit boring, Jamie and Aaron went to skate a natural launch across the road. After hitting this several times and stumbling around looking like idiots (much to the amusement of some British kids who were passing by) we called it a day and headed back to the hostel, which was only two stops down the yellow line.

After dumping our gear at the hostel at about 7, we made our first visit to Carrefour, which is the Spanish (technically French) equivalent of Tesco.

The queues in Carrefour were absolutely nuts, and as most of the group were on a tight schedule to make a Tapas night at 9, they left and went for food elsewhere, which left Adam, Luke and I to brave the queues and weird Spanish food and drink.

We finally returned to the hostel to find Fish, Jamie and Cat sat downstairs munching away on bread and cheese.

After cooking a pizza and heading upstairs to our room, we were greeted by a random trio of German girls (who were at first believed to be French) who were staying in our room for the duration of our trip. We headed back downstairs to chill, and left for our rooms at about 11 to catch up on some much needed sleep.

The tapas group (Guy, Wiggy, Doug, Polhill, Worner, Matty and Adam) headed to the tapas place, which, in the words of Matty, was ‘weak’ (“a bit of stuff on dry bread”). After eating tapas, they left for the flamenco bar, which turned out to be very popular with the guys. After watching some dancing and being chatted up by some random American girl, they left for an Irish pub, where a drunken game of I-have-never was played. In a brief moment of thoughtlessness, Polhill revealed that he had once rimmed a girl. This left the nickname ‘Rimmer’ to haunt him for the rest of the tour, and with every reference to sex (however small), a sly reference to Polhill and rimming was made.

The group left the pub for an underground club, where a member of staff from the hostel called Angel handed out several rounds of free shots. Needless to say, the group were slightly worse for wear and headed to McDonalds before returning to the hostel. After crashing through the hostel door and making enough noise to wake the dead, Matty thought it would be a good idea to attack me with the flash on his phone. He was soon to regret this as an aggravated Dre kicked with full force into the air, hitting Matty in the chest and face. After throwing some cookies, the group settled down and finally fell asleep around 2:30 am.

At 9.00am, Fish decided it was a great idea to knock on our hostel room door, as he, Jamie and Cat had been up since just after 8. With the force of a small pneumatic impact hammer, Fish almost knocked the door off its hinges, which (needless to say) awoke everyone inside. This included the three German girls, who Fish happened to not know about. This was the first of many times that we would wake up the German girls, who went out drinking all night, every night, and usually returned around 2 in the morning.

After crawling out of bed, everyone (especially myself) were hyped on the ‘buffet breakfast’ advertised on the website, which was included in the price of our stay. We emerged downstairs to find three different types of cereal, all of which were the Spanish equivalent of Tesco value (i.e. they all tasted like shit!). In addition, there was a collection of muffins, small cakes and ‘fresh’ fruit, and piles of toast. To add to the disappointment of the cereals, the milk provided was warm, UHT longlife milk, which was like glorified water. I sneakily managed to swipe a small collection of muffins and cakes to munch on during the day.

After the huge anti-climax regarding the breakfast, we headed back upstairs to shower and get ready for the day. The showers were to everyone’s satisfaction, but especially to Luke and Mark, who ended up showering in the girls’ showers. As it had rained the day before, the floor was drenched as we met on the terrace of the hostel.

Fortunately, there was now not a sign of a cloud in the sky, and word spread of heading to Montbau for the day, which is the location of the infamous x-battle ledge, amongst other spots.

We left the hostel at 10:20, but the destination was changed to Forum. Getting on the yellow line at Jaume I (the hostel stop), we travelled a few stops and emerged near the infamous forum ledges and the Julian Bah disaster gap.

Polhill immediately swore to attempt the biggest disaster, but wanted to save it for the end of the tour, in case of any injury. Jamie had previously said that he would try the gap if anyone else did, so Polhill’s promise was much to his dismay as he contemplated not returning to the UK in one piece.

Wanting to warm up before we hit the hammer spots, we headed to the small metal skatepark near the ledges, where Jamie unveiled his ‘I love Barcelona’ tee, which he’d bought that morning when he snuck out of the hostel.

Sunscreen was applied, and team Wifebeater (as in vests, not guys who beat their wives) was established. Notable mentions on the small metal ledge were Matty with perfect bs savannahs, Polhill with a kindgrind and Fish with various power souls. I played with a few basic tricks, holding bs royales and fs farvhs the whole ledge, but fell pretty badly on a mistral attempt, digging my hand into the hot concrete. It turned out I’d taken most of the skin off the palm of my hand, and I had blood running down it, which looked really cool and was sure to impress any gangbangers or girls we happened to run into.

We moved on to a spot which can only be described as ‘Big Lloyds in Barcelona’. Several knee high steps, all set back from one another. (Julio does a run on it in We Are Valo). The first session was to gap up to grind on the second step from the floor, which also meant gapping over the start of the first step. Fish landed a topsoul, Matty got a bs royale and a fs farvh whilst I landed an acid soul and a switch topsoul.

Reynolds proceeded to attempt gapping from the top of the 5th (and top) step to the floor with a mute 180. He fell a few times, but something in his 50/50 core frames snapped on the fourth and final attempt. With Reynolds calling it a day, Galwas stepped up and landed the trick first try.

The final session at this spot was grinding the second step and gapping to the floor. Matty landed a fullcab bs savannah, Adam landed a bs torque, and I landed sweatstance, truespin acid and ao pornstar fullcab out. We then headed for the forum ledges by the water (under the large roof).

The session got underway, and before you could say “Hey Fish, do a fishbrain!” he’d done it. He also landed a topsoul, and went on to lace ao topside pornstar.

I landed a royale, and was happy considering I hadn’t skated the forum ledges the previous year. Adam pulled a bs farvh first try, and went on to land bs torque. Straight out of nowhere, he bs torqued it again, but switched it to bs savannah halfway down the ledge, which was met by a chorus of cheers.

Matty landed a fs farvh and top pornstar, and then a sweatstance. He began attempting 360 topsouls, but after lacing 270 bs royale a few times, he decided to leave it for another day. Guy pondered about trying the ledge a few times, and eventually landed a perfect bs farvh down it. Polhill landed a topsoul, a topacid, a bk unity and a kindgrind, and then finished the session off with a nice negative mistral.

After leaving the ledges and stopping to look at a (completely insane) rail to rail, Polhill had a moment where his brain stopped working, leaving him unable to think coherently, at which point his mouth happened to say “I’m going to do it, right now”. Being concerned not only with his mental health, but also that there was a high possibility of death on his part, the others spent the next few minutes trying to talk him out of it.

After realising how determined he was to do the rail, the photographers shut up and sat down to take photos, and the filmers got their cameras ready. Everyone else sat around and shook their heads in complete disbelief. As a bit of encouragement, Matty started a ‘€2 each if he lands it’ rally, which everyone agreed to. With €20 and his street rep at stake, Polhill started skating the first rail. After realising that it was simply too slow to ever reach the second rail, a bit of wax was applied, and Polhill tried again. He made it to the end of the first rail several times, but on his final attempt, after jumping and locking the second rail, he slipped out, grabbed the rail, flipped off and smashed his hip and knee into the stairs.

After the savage bail, everyone ran up to ensure Polhill was ok, and after reviewing the footage we decided a bit of food was needed. We headed for the Forum Mall, which has an upstairs food court. Polhill had trouble walking, so put his skates on and rolled the whole way to the mall. Passing by the other forum ledges on the way (a’la Julian Bah gap), Adam had a sudden desire to skate the smaller of the 3 disaster gaps, which is a gap of ‘only’ 2 steps. Some Swiss rollerbladers arrived and watched us. Whilst Adam rolled up a few times and considered trying it, gangbanger #1 Matty Thugg Brown (he asked me to write that) stepped up and laced a disaster royale first try. After shouting about we-stoners and some other incomprehensible gangbanger talk for a while, Matty landed it again to get it on camera.

Adam stepped out of wuss-mode and landed a disaster bs farvh first try, at which point we left to get food. Well, Jamie, Cat and I left, whilst the others sat on the steps to watch the footage back.

We headed straight for McDonalds (embracing the culture when in a foreign country is so overrated!) due to Jamie’s cheeseburger craving.

We passed a Subway on the way, but concluded that ordering a subway is complicated enough in English, let alone Spanish! After making it to McDonalds, Jamie was devastated by the discovery that the Spanish don’t serve double cheeseburgers, only single ones. The three of us settled for a quarter pounder each. After meeting up with Worner & Co at Subway about 20 minutes later, and waiting for Fish to take a 20 minute dump , we headed back to the metro, destination Besos.

Before leaving Forum, a stop to the pharmacists was made, to buy some much needed plasters and bandages for the injured members of the group (myself and Polhill).

Once on the metro, Wiggy started a notion to invent names for me, as I had inadvertently become the group leader when it came to travelling around. Suggestions from the group included Andre 2000 and Dre the Seal (accompanied by a short dance routine by Wiggy himself to explain who Dre the Seal actually was).

As we arrived at the infamous humps-with-rail-at-end in Besos, we gave some skateboarders directions to Forum and the skating commenced. Fish created a new signature trick, labelled the Fish Flail by the group, as he tried to gap over the rail at the end, but left his legs flailing in the air and caught one of his feet on the top of the rail, sending him crashing to the floor in a tangle of limbs. After falling on his face and getting up, he sat down with the rest of the non-skating group to watch the session.

Everyone was either tired or injured (or both) by this point, so a small chilled session was had. Matty was the first to gap the rail, followed closely by Worner. As Worner 180′d it, Matty stepped it up a notch and 360′d it, at which point Worner started pulling huge fakie airs over the rail. The rest of the people skating (Jamie, Luke, Dre, Reynolds) settled for skating the humps themselves, rather than the rail at the end. Luke, Reynolds and Matty pulled some 540′s, and Reynolds went up to pull bio 5′s and fakie bio 7′s. Dre played with grinds on the small ledge on the side of the humps into the bank, but eventually fell on his hand again. Matty managed to pull of the first crotch grab air of the tour, followed by a 540 over the rail, at which point Worner landed a fakie 360 over it.

All of a sudden, completely out of the blue, we were overrun by 4 ghetto black kids (about the age of 8-9) on mountain bikes, who jacked Luke up for a cigarette using secret Spanish scare tactics, such as pointing obscenely and shouting. Fish got up from his injured state and borrowed one of the kid’s bikes, and proceeded to ride around on the humps for a while, much to everyone’s amusement.

After landing a backflip tailwhip, Aaron just sat around and looked cool for a while, whilst the kid who’s bike he’d borrowed went around on Reynolds skates. After the arrival of another 10 or so kids, we were intimidated enough to leave, but not after Reynolds having to chase after the kid so he could get his skates back.

We got back on the metro and headed back to Jaume I and the hostel. After watching some footage and looking at pics for an hour or so, we headed out to get some drink. Fish, Jamie, Matty, Luke and I went to a small shop around the corner and bought several bottles of 11.5% sangria at €1/bottle. After getting back to the hostel, it was decided that food was needed. Jamie, Cat and I headed to a place called Bocatta and had a grilled panini, whilst the rest of the group headed for Carrefour to get pizza, only to find that it was closed. Running into a british woman, they were dragged along to a posh looking restaurant and “paid a lot of money for not a lot of food”. After grabbing some ice cream, they returned to the hostel. Meanwhile, Cat, Jamie and I had bought some pic ‘n mix, and were waiting for the others at the hostel when they got back. After sitting down to watch the footage from day 2, Mark spent 20 mins finding a 5 second clip of a pidgeon he had filmed. His enthusiasm about the pidgeon clip bought roars of laughter from the rest of the group, sparking qoutes such as “Fuck the rail, where’s the pidgeon?”.

After helping Reynolds to repair his skates, and Adam to change his bearings, we began planning Day 3. Whilst heading to bed at about midnight, someone realised that the german girls had not yet returned, which launched the “Where the fuck are the germans?” qoute, which was used several times for the rest of the stay.

There was word of taking a day out of skating to spend the day on the beach, and the final decision was for half the group to go skating, and the rest to go to the beach.

Rising nice and early at 8.00am, we tried to salvage as much as possible at breakfast, and got ready to go out. Instead of half the group heading to the beach, everyone decided to tag along to Montbau. We got to Montbau, to find that the infamous x-battle ledge now had bollards at the bottom of the landing, which spelt death for anyone brave enough to skate it. The whole rail had also been removed, whereas half of it remained the year before.

We headed down the hill slightly to the long, low rail that Si Coburn does whilst filming himself in Strain. Worner activated his infinite balance cheat by pressing Up, Down, Left, Right, Triangle and did the entire rail second try.

With everyone trying to do the whole rail, I decided I’d go for a soul grind, which I find easy to balance. After getting to 7 posts from the end of the rail on my third attempt, I went faster on the next attempt, but missed my soul foot and corpsed onto the rail, hitting my knee badly on the way down (NOTE: A soul grind!). My knee came off pretty badly, and left me unable to walk, so I was out for the day and proceeded to lie in the sun by the rail, getting my tan on the go whilst writhing in pain. The following tricks are the tricks which were held to the bottom of the rail: Matty – fs farvh, Reynolds – bs royale, Guy – fs farvh, Jamie – bs royale.

Jamie, Cat and I decided it was time to hit the beach, mainly because I was unable to walk. Going via the hostel to drop our stuff off, we walked to La Rambla and then down to Port Vell, where Jamie managed to pick up some £120 sunglasses for a mere £10 from a dodgy looking Spaniard. We went into the Port Vell mall, where Jamie bought a vest, and I bought some flip flops. We continued to the beach, stopping in “the spar where Terry bought his crisps last year” (- Jamie) and crashed out on some deck chairs. We weren’t occupying them for long before we were asked for €5 to stay on them by a fat black guy, so we moved to lying on beach towels instead. The clouds quickly moved in, so after about 30-40 minutes we decided we’d had enough and headed back to the hostel. We sat on the terrace for an hour or so and played shithead (the card game, for those who don’t know it), at which point the others returned.

They had left the rail and headed for the matches (a giant pack of matches, made out of metal) and took some pictures.

From the matches, they saw some steep rails, but it turned out that they ran straight into the road upon closer inspection. No one in the group fancied their chances against a car, so they moved on to some concrete benches. Adam did bs farvh 450 out, Matty did royale, bs farvh and sit down bs torque, Reynolds did royale to bs favh and royale to bs savannah, and Fish got grabbed backslide, zerospin royale and fullcab bs farvh.

They left the area and headed for the footbridge we’d seen last year, which has a disable ramp which can only be explained as an inverted roll-in as high as a house. With no one else having the guts to even attempt it, Polhill stepped up and dropped in from halfway.  Climbing back up to the top of the bridge, he was still considering whether or not he should do it or not when he started rolling down it. Deciding it was too late, he simply went down it and hoped for the rest. By the time he reached the bottom of the bridge, it was estimated that he was travelling at 30-40 mph, which is a crazy speed to get on skates. Reynolds happened to be standing in the wrong place, and almost got annihilated by Polhill as he came down the bridge.

They then stumbled upon a triple kinked chrome rail, where Polhill, Adam, Fish and Matty tried to skate it. Soon after, whilst an old woman distracted Fish, a bucket full of water was poured on him from the top of a building, soaking him from head to toe. The Spanish are clever in their warfare tactics.

The group got back on the metro and headed for Sant Marti, which is where the park full of light grey marble banks is located. Adam pulled a 540 over the rail from the top of the bank to the floor, and went on to do “some spinning thing” on the bank, followed closely by a kindgrind, all in one run. Guy landed royale and bs farvh on the rail, gapping off to the floor. Fish landed a topsoul and a fishbrain the entire length of the high bank from the floor. At some point in the session, more water was thrown at the group by locals, but they kept skating. Matty rolled up the bank to sweatstance to 270 topsoul. Adam got a backslide to ao fishbrain, but Polhill stole the show with a topsoul tornado (360 outspin for those who don’t agree with me on the meaning of tornado) topsoul. With two avid birdwatchers in the group, Doug spent his time observing Cockatils, whilst Worndog was entertained by a pidgeon with a limp.

After leaving on foot, only to find another bank to rail, the group resumed skating. Some residents tried to kick them off, but resorted to calling the police, at which point Reynolds and Polhill disappeared out of sight quicker than you could say “run if you’re a wuss”. The group later caught up with the two runners in the metro, who claimed to have seen the flashing lights of a police car. After getting the metro to Passeig de Gracia and getting on the yellow line to Jaume I, they arrived back at the hostel.

Everyone chilled on the terrace for an hour or so and talked about the day. Once the hunger levels had risen enough, food was called for, and Matty rallied up the troops and headed for KFC. After piling into KFC and getting snaked in the queue by some Spanish women (who Fish threatened to kill), Reynolds, Adam, Fish and Dre decided to go to the McDonalds across the road instead. Reynolds left with the KFC gang, whilst the other three remained to eat in. After heading back to the hostel, we hit up the local Spar to get some food/drink supplies for Day 4. Just before reaching the shop, Fish was hassled, hustled and haggled by a genuine black Spanish gangbanger, who shouted “Hashish!” at him until Fish finally told him he wasn’t interested. After leaving Spar, I needed some cash, and proceeded to almost accidentaly draw out €170, when I’d selected €70. After the machine timed out and returned my card, I swore never to trust a foreign ATM ever again. After limping back to the hostel, we were greeted by the KFC gang, who were taking it in turn to go for a “KFC shit”, which happened to be an especially bad shit, brought on by the excessive consumption of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

We then sat around for 2 hours or so, watching footage with the German girls, with Polhill and Jamie showing off with various playing card tricks. Everyone except Wiggy, Jamie, Cat, Polhill, Reynolds and I went to the Universitat Plaza ledges at 10:30, and returned at 12:20. In the meantime, Polhill had us entertained with various skydiving stories, most of them involving very gruesome deaths. Cornwall was discussed as a tectonic plate, an independent country and a floating pile of garbage. Everyone except Matty, Luke and Reynolds headed to bed at about 12:45. The 3 of them went out for a smoke, where they ran into the hostel cleaner, who was smoking pot around the corner. Matty ended up sharing a joint with the cleaner, but smoked it whilst the lit end of the joint was in the cleaner’s mouth, at which he first thought she was trying to kiss him. As they returned to the hostel room, it was obvious that there was some very violent sex going on in the room above ours, so much so that the lights in the ceiling of our room were shaking, which was much to everyone’s amusement.

Qoutes of the day:

“Are we talking about shit again?”

“Laxatives are not funny.”

Everyone got out of bed at about 9, with the exception of Luke, Polhill and Reynolds, who rolled themselves out of bed (with a little bit of help!) at 10. We headed out towards La Rambla at 11, and hit up Carrefour for supplies. Outside, Fish attempted convince a local man to sell him a pidgeon, but was denied due to being foreign.

We got on the train at Catalunya (for which we were able to use our T-10 tickets, much to everyones surprise), and headed for Sant Cugat, which is the location of the green rails. After a short walk (limp in my case) we got to the rails, where people sat down and got comfortable, applying sunscreen and such.

I decided I was going to make the most of the cloudless sky and the blistering sunshine, and laid out on a bank next to the rail on a towel, wearing nothing but shorts, which was much to the bemusement of the locals, who were all dressed in overcoats, with many people wearing scarves. Meanwhile, Jamie was the first to do the rail with a fs royale. He stepped this up with a shifty fs royale, and then a safety to fs royale. Matty got bs unity, bs farvh, royale, 270 bs royale and 360 mistral. Adam got fullcab ao miszou and fakie 450 bs royale. Fish got topsoul, royale and fell several times (3 times on his nuts) trying 360 topsoul. Polhill got fullcab royale, fullcab kindgrind (both revert out!) and made several very close 450 royale attempts. Guy landed a front farvh, and immediately stepped it up with a front torque. Luke was trying to miszou the rail, but corpsed into the stairs several times, and stuck on his final attempt and ate shit into the floor.

As the session came to an end, Polhill was still trying 450 royales, but his wheels finally clogged up with the dust from the side of the rails, and he was unable to skate. We left the rails at 15:10 and headed for the train station, where we were almost mauled to death by an angry Alsatian police dog. Whilst waiting for the train, Worner and Polhill bought “completely over-packaged ice cream” from a vending machine, and were amazed by the inclusion of a wet-wipe. After getting on the train and getting back to Catalunya, we walked the 20 minute underground walk to the red line.

At this point, Worner decided to praise my leading of the group with; “Good job Dre’s here, sorting out the metro and all”, to which Wiggy chimed in “And he’s still not loving police”. We took the red line to Urquanoana, where we changed to the yellow line and got off at Barceloneta, where there is a small park with two marble banks which Jamie and I had spotted the day before. Jamie was the first to skate, pulling out royales and topsouls.

Adam played with the gap between the banks, whilst Luke was messing around with various wallride and walltap combinations. Polhill was busy setting up his camera and flash, whilst everyone else was busy eating/smoking. Jamie started doing royale – bs farvh – soul combinations, and with a bit of encouragement from myself, he landed it with a 360 into the bank.

Adam gave up on skating, and took out his XM-2 to film for a while. The rest of the group spent 5 minutes bullying Reynolds into skating the banks, to which he eventually gave in.

At this point, every trick landed was met with a synchronised “Uuuuhhhh!” from Doug, Fish and Matty, who were sat on a bench watching. Fish disappeared for a few minutes and came back with his hand covered in birdshit, for which he had no explanation.

Jamie landed royale – bs farvh – royale – ao topsoul, whilst Reynolds took a few harsh slams jumping up the bank to ao top porn. He eventually laced a few ao top porns from the floor, and Jamie went on to land royale – ao topsoul – 270 royale. Matty did top porn from the floor, but fell pretty bad trying a fishbrain, after landing a rocket fishbrain from the floor on the previous try. Polhill got topacid – bs royale – truespin soul. Polhill missed a topacid and his rear end got more than a little bit familiar with the sharp edge of the bank, which he appeared to enjoy immensely as he rolled off looking like he’d just been violated by an elephant.

The session got more intense as Jamie got royale – ao topsoul – 270 royale – ao topsoul, Polhill got topacid – bs royale – truespin soul – stepback topacid and Reynolds got topsoul – switch truespin top acid almost the entire length of the bank. As the tricks got harder, so did the slams, as Reynolds found out as he missed a tru top acid switch-up and got as familiar with the bank as Polhill did earlier. Polhill was trying to land the topsoul tornado topsoul that he landed at the other ledges, but fell on his (already injured) knee before he could land it, but landed a topsoul 450 backside after sitting down for a while, and then topacid – bs savannah – truespin soul. Matty got top porn to truespin miszou and royale – 270 tru top acid. Reynolds landed ao top porn to soul.

Meanwhile, Doug entertained the guys on the bench with the tale of his first Jacusk (a harder-than-usual erection), which happened when he went out with ‘Mary’ in the woods at age 14. He also informed us that ejaculation during a Jacusk is “painful, yet pleasurable”.

Just before we left, a Spaniard who must’ve been at least 60 tried to bully Jamie into gapping between the ledges. After Jamie landed it, the Spaniard decided he wanted to see a gap to grind, which Jamie refused. ‘El spaniardo’ proceeded to shake his head and mumble something ending in the word ‘shit’, much to everyone’s amusement.

Leaving the ledges at 6, we headed for Port Vell, location of the big blue fish and red brick volcanoes seen in Black Market. Halfway there, Guy suddenly went stiff with fear, when he realised he wasn’t carrying his £1,500 Canon XM-2 camcorder, and hadn’t been since we left the banked ledges. Bursting into a fit of panic and a mouthful of obscenities, he started running back to the ledges, passing half of the group who were walking a bit behind. Shouting “did anyone pick up my camera?!” as he approached, he was met with a “what camera?” from Doug. After 20-30 seconds of panicking/crying/shaking in terror, Doug produced a camera bag containing a £1,500 Canon XM-2 camcorder from behind his back, at which point Guy almost passed out with relief. Turns out Doug had been carrying it all along. We headed on to Port Vell, with several people voicing their dismay with the way Doug almost frightened the life out of Guy, with Doug protesting that Guy should learn not to leave his stuff behind.

We got to Port Vell, and stopped for a group photo in the big blue fish skated by Julian Bah in Black Market outside L’Aqvarium.

After eyeing up the stairs for a short amount of time, Reynolds was bullied into a misty flip down them, which he first attempted in his shoes.

Landing the flip (to a round of applause by watching holiday makers), he popped his skates on his feet and warmed up with a mute 180, but as he climbed back up the stairs to land the misty flip, we were approached by a rugged mountain of a spanish security guard in a burgundy polo, who insisted we leave immediately. Considering we would probably have more luck fighting a group of gorillas, we discreetly told the guy to fuck off and quickly left L’Aqvarium.

On the short walk to the red brick volcanoes, Luke bought a ‘Super-HotDog’, which turned out to be not-so-super at all, and some of us sat down on some benches for a while, whilst Adam, Fish and Matty skated the volcanoes. After getting some shots (courtesy of myself and my Canon Powershot A550) Fish managed to hurt his hand, whilst Adam asked me to take some photos of him. Adam started co-planning a run with Worndog, consisting of a big air over one of the volcanoes, followed by a 180 down to the pavement below the raised platform we were on. When it actually came to doing the run, Worner filmed, and Adam stepped it up a level by pulling a soul grind on the marble edge, and 540′ing down the gap instead of a 180.

Rummaging through Polhills bag, I managed to get my hands on a camcorder fisheye, which I proceeded to hold in front of my camera, getting some very random photos.

Matty started doing mute 360′s over the volcanoes, and Polhill sessioned safety cab 180′s. Worner was (as per usual) off on his own, eyeing up the triangular handrails Broskow skates in KFC Zombie Comatose. We quickly gathered around him as a small support crowd, and did the rail second try, but landing it a third time to get it on camera.

Luke suggested heading back to the Hostel, as it was getting dark, so we headed for the opening bridge (as seen in Tony Hawks Underground 2, Barcelona level) and back to the city. On the way, we encountered one of the many Barcelona ‘shit-smells’, which occur every 15-20 minutes of walking in Barcelona, which Matty described as smelling “worse than my whiskey sick”. Once over the bridge, we stopped for a while to watch the crazy number of fish swimming around in the water along the shore.

We wandered back up Las Rambla, stopping in a camera store for Worner, Polhill, Adam and Guy to drool over cameras and various camera equipment. Jamie and Kat headed for McDonalds to get some food, whereas I led the rest of the group onto a restaurant called La Fonda, on the high recommendation of Ian Hendrie himself. The restaurant was tucked away deep inside the weavering maze of Barcelona back streets, but we were armed with a map and the ability to speak Spanglish, and eventually found our way there. As we rounded the last corner, we spotted what appeared to be the population of a small country queuing for a glass fronted, well-lit building which looked completely out of place in the gothic quarters of Barcelona. Turns out this was La Fonda, and we quickly realised it would be impossible to get a table for 13, so we wandered back to way we came, heading for a square of restaurants we had spotted on the way there.

Settling for an ok-ish looking restaurants which could seat the 13 of us immediately, we sat down at our table and started scanning the menu. Polhill, Reynolds and I decided the food looked extremely shit, considering the prices, and left to grab a Subway. Or at least we thought we were going for a subway, but Polhill had a cunning plan. He’d gotten the three of us out of the restaurant and away from the larger group, so we could go to La Fonda and enjoy our ‘Ian Hendrie 5-star’ meal. Arriving back at La Fonda, the small country of people had grown to a small continent, so the three of us decided that maybe Subway was the best option.

After consuming a subway and heading back to the restaurant, I stumbled upon a walking stick, which I figured would go well with my injured knee + limp. After 5 mins of walking with the stick, Polhill voiced his concern that the stick might have AIDS, at which point I decided to leave the stick by the side of the road. After making it back to the restaurant and talking to the others (who appeared to be thoroughly enjoying their food) who said they would call us when they got out, the three of us headed on to the (previously mentioned) Irish travelers pub, for which we had vouchers for a free double shot with any alcoholic drink.

After two rounds of drink (with the help of a friendly Irish waitor/barman), consisting of a pint and a double of whisky on each round, we were feeling quite jolly. Topics ranged from relationships to upbringing, and ended up being joined by a British bouncer (we were sat by the door). Inbetween shouting at people for not shutting the door as they came in or left, he told us about how he had moved to Barcelona several years earlier to work, and just couldn’t bring himself to leave. He also gave us some tips on how to avoid being mugged or robbed, and told us stories he’d heard of criminals getting the better of innocent tourists. As he went up for his last drink, Reynolds got some manly man-love from a guy at the bar from Aberdeen, who greatly admired his choice in whisky, after which we left.

As we arrived back at the hostel, we were greeted by a ‘receptionist’ we hadn’t seen before. Up until this point, the people at the hostel had been very cool, and we’d had no issues with them, and they’d had no issues with us. After 5 mins of talking and banter in our room, the new guy came up and told us that if he had to come up and tell us to be quiet again, he would kick us out on the street, along with all our belongings. We spent the next 20 minutes slagging him off and talking about what an absolute knob he was. Doug, Polhill, Wiggy and Luke grabbed the French-German girls and headed for some bar down the road to get drunk, while the rest of us watched some footage and headed to bed at about 1:30.

The party go-ers headed straight for the travelers bar that Polhill, Reynolds and I had been in earlier, and they proceeded to take advantage of the ‘free double with any drink’ offer. Polhill, being already relatively drunk, moved on to tequila, and the others quickly followed suit, until the French-German girls asked everyone to follow them to another bar they knew of. With the combination of everyone in the group being quite drunk by this point, and every Barcelona side street looking the same, they ended up wandering around for over an hour, and eventually decided to just head down to Port Vell to watch the fish (as mentioned earlier). They ended up returning to the hostel at past 4:30am.

Everyone got up about 10am and headed downstairs to discover that breakfast had been and gone, meaning we had to go out and located breakfast ourselves. After a 20 minute meeting regarding the best place to go for food, we walked down to a newsagent down the road, where we happened to spot a lonely looking guy in a Vibralux hoodie, who turned out to be none other than Jeff Colada (whoever that is!) from America. Adam had a chat with him and discovered he was in BCN to skate too, so telephone numbers were exchanged and it was agreed that we’d meet up at some point in the following days.

After grabbing some food, we headed back to the hostel and got ready for the day, waiting for some of the group to return from a trip to the nearby bakery. We left the hostel at 1, and headed straight for the olympic ledges, getting on the metro at Jaume I, and going 2 stops to Vila Olympica. Once we got to the ledges, the session quickly got underway, with Wiggy and Doug being the only ones not skating. I spent about 10 minutes stretching and warming up my busted knee, and eventually managed to skate a bit, hitting a few simple tricks on the ledges, until I hit a hole in the floor and fell on my busted hand.

Matty and Jamie were playing with tech switches, with Matty lacing a truespin pornstar to acid. Fish and Adam started a game of ’2-trees-and-a-bush’ challenge, which consisted of grinding a long section of the ledge, in which you passed two trees and one bush.

Everyone else joined on this, except Worner and Polhill who wandered off to scout for nearby spots. I chose to tag along with them, and we covered a few blocks until heading back to the ledges, at which point everyone was ready to move down the beach.

Heading down the beach, we passed the ‘Cossimo Drop Rail’, which is a long, sloping white rail with a drop into the river below on one side, and steep wooden stairs on the other. Adam stepped straight up and laced a bs farvhernugen third try, whilst the rest of the gang had a stalling competition on some nearby wooden barriers, with Polhill taking the trophy with a 720 soul (stall).

We continued down the beach, eventually reaching a chrome kink rail, where Fish got attacked by a bee. Fish appeared to be particularly scared of bees, or at least of this bee, and reacted in a similar manner to how the defenseless civilians run from gunfire in Rambo IV.

After Fish had finished sketching out, people started skating the rail. Adam bs farvhed the lower half of the kink first try, followed closely by Matty with another bs farvh. Adam stepped up his game with a bs torque, at which point Matty started jumping to truespin savannahs. After locking a couple, but sliding out each time, Matty made it down the rail but his landing was slightly off and he tumbled backwards. Adam was on a mission, and powered through with a mistral, during which Matty had climbed back up the stairs, and followed the mistral straight up with another truespin savannah, which he now landed. Both tricks were followed by a chorus of cheers from the rest of us.

Adam proceeded to start attempting fullcab bs farvhs, but decided he needed more speed, for which he began fakie stair riding down the first set of stairs. He managed to get the speed he needed, and landed fullcab bs farvh third try. Not content with this, he stepped it up by switching up to royale before the end of the rail, and then doing yet another fullcab bs farvh, but switching it to kindgrind.

Inspired by the stair riding antics of Mr. Galwas, Fish decided he’d have a go too, but with added nuts and sauce. Coming up fakie, he jumped right before the start of the stairs and did a fakie 360, but instead of gapping the set he landed halfway down and stair rid the rest.

While all of this was going on, Doug was doing some ‘parkour’ on the slanted wall running along the beach, which Polhill thought looked fun and managed to pull off some crazy upside down spinning handflip off the wall.

Adam was trying another trick, but gave up after a few attempts, and we left for the very nearby concrete skatepark. We got there and the place was fairly empty, there were only a few BMXers and some kids on scooters, skates and skateboards in the park. Fish and Worner started sessioning the spine setup, with everyone else pulling various grabs and spins out of the mini bowl. Polhill was the first to land both 720 and fakie 720, Luke hurt his knee on a 540 bail, and Jamie and Matty were also playing with the 5’s. Adam decided he wanted a go, and started pulling huge 540’s out of the bowl, going higher than anyone else.

About 20 minutes into the session, Jamie went for a really high 540, but an instant before leaving the ramp he spotted a bmxer coming down from a trick in the nearby quarter pipe facing the bowl, who was now on a collision course with Jamie. Trying to bail out of the trick, he managed to land quite safely but ended up swinging one of his arms straight into the metal stunt peg of the bmx, which made a distinct ‘cracking’ noise.

A 10 minute panic ensued, mainly fuelled by Reynolds, who seemed convinced that Jamie had broken his wrist. After a break and a smoke, Jamie decided he was fine to skate, but borrowed a wrist guard from myself as a precaution.

We headed down the beach and found another rail very close to the skatepark. There was a slightly raised platform next to the rail, making it slightly lower on that side, and Jamie braved the first trick with a bs royale, switching it to fs farvh second try. Worner landed some fs royales, Guy did some fs farvhs, and we eventually got booted off by a big hairy Spaniard carrying a shovel.

We headed further down the beach, passing a silver car which was rocking back and forth, much to everyone’s amusement (dogging, anyone?). Doug got it into his head that he’d walk up and get a closer look, but chickened out, in spite of the peer pressure he was receiving from the rest of the group.

Crossing the road, we arrived at the Forum Mall, where half the group headed to McDonalds, and the rest of us went to Subway. As courtesy of Subways free refill drinks, Polhill managed to completely fill an empty 2L bottle with free Pepsi, almost completely draining the machine. Worner then decided he’d very much like some Pepsi, but with the machine being near-empty is simply sprayed a watery-pepsi foam onto his entire right arm, which the rest of us found absolutely hilarious. Being bitter about being laughed at by me, he took note of how sunburnt my face was, and started making jokes about anything red he could spot, including red plastic chairs and red signs outside stores.

As we sat outside Subway and waited for the McDonalds gang, while Wiggy and Guy had a dance-off I frantically applied some last-minute sunscreen and we eventually left the mall and headed straight for the disaster ledges.

As we arrived, Adam rang American traveler Jeff Colada and arranged for him to meet us there in 10 minutes. Matty was the first with his skates on, and made a pact to attempt the middle disaster gap on the final day in BCN, and went on to royale the same ledge without the disaster.

Fish, Jamie and Polhill decided they wanted to skate too, and Fish busted out one of his signature perfect topsouls first try, while Polhill did a bs unity. After a topsoul to fakie, Fish stepped it up to a fishbrain, which he landed second try, and Polhill followed it up with a topacid after a few attempts.

Fish wanted to leave with a full scorecard, and finished off his session with a top porn and a bs royale. He then joined Jamie, Kat and myself as we headed for the nearby undercover flatbank ledge.

Jamie and Fish sessioned some bs royales, while I was doing fs royales, but no one was making it more than 2/3rds of the way along the ledge.

A lonely looking Luke arrived, and wanted to be safe and try out the transition of the bank before skating the ledge. Rolling halfway up the ledge, he somehow managed to lose his balance completely and ended up falling face first into the bank. His (rather funny) bail was followed by Fish, who lost his footing a couple of times and after smashing his hip into the floor one final time he took a break and borrowed my camera to take some photos. I finally did the whole ledge after god know how many tries, and Jamie did it almost straight after.

We headed back to the disaster ledges to find that the others had apparently disappeared into thin air, with no word as to where they could have gone. Assuming they were still in the local area, we headed around the other spots in Forum, eventually finding them by the long ledge down 3 sets of stairs that Tom Martin bs royales in ‘Strain’. Mark and Doug were in an intense bamboo stick fight, which Mark eventually won.

Matty and Fish were trying to grind the entire ledge, but gave up after 10 or so attempts, and we all headed down to the big spotted vert waves along the seafront. With the sun setting (it was about 7:20pm) everyone was in a rush to get the last session of the day in, and a ‘ballbagging’ session ensued, where the challenge was to start from a high a point as possible on the ‘wave’, and drop-in. The main concern was the sea, which was a mere stonethrow from the bottom of the ramp, and going too fast would result in either falling down some stairs into the water, or gapping the stairs, which (clearly) also result in a fall into the water.

Polhill decided to assert his dominance in this display of complete lack of common sense, and started about two-thirds of the way up the wave. Needless to say, it went pretty quick and he barely managed to stop himself from hitting the stairs. Guy followed this up, starting a bit higher up, and carved away from the stairs, missing them by only a few inches. Polhill went slightly higher again, and was left victorious, as Guy failed to step-up to the challenge of going even higher. The rest of us played with the array of various cameras we had with us, and took some groovy photos, eventually heading back to the hostel around 8pm.

Myself, Fish and Polhill skated down the hill to the metro station, whereas the others walked, so we had a couple of minutes to spare, resulting in a bs royale down the forum ledges by Fish, and a bs Farvh by Polhill, after which both of them fell.

After making a visit to a pharmacy (which sold dildos) and a sports shop, we hopped on the metro and got back to the hostel around 8:45, at which point drinking commenced, and half the group watched footage from the day, and the other half watched a basketball game on TV. Having eaten, we headed out at 11:30pm, and went straight to the travelers bar. Everyone except myself, Fish, Adam and Guy got a drink + free shot, and the 4 of us who didn’t left after a short while, having watched parts of a skateboarding video playing at the bar.

Walking back to the hostel through various Barcelona side streets, the 4 of us walked in the following order: I was at the front, followed by Adam and Fish walking alongside each other, and Guy at the back. Walking through one of the alleys between two main streets, we approached three giant (fat) half-cast women who were most probably prostitutes. What happened next is best explained in Adam’s own words:

“One grabbed my arm, one grabbed my balls and the last one tried to grab my wallet”

After getting “a cup and a squeeze”, Fish started fretting about the possibility of having caught AIDS, and as we got back to the hostel, Adam and Fish went to decontaminate their testicles. A relatively calm and collected (and presumably sober) Reynolds returned with a very drunken Mark a while later, who was carrying a giant remote control car (which was missing both a wheel and the remote control itself). Mark was ever so proud of his find, and it took 15 minutes of shouting about the fact that he’d found a broken, discarded remote control car to realize that maybe it wasn’t such a treasure after all.

It turned out that Doug and Wiggy had disappeared with the German girls, where Wiggy stayed on the beach with Sofia, and Doug went on with the others. As they were walking around, an apparently drunken white guy approached Doug in the street, and proceeded to grab him and have a little dance, much to everyone’s amusement. 10 minutes later, Doug realized his wallet was missing, losing him €35, his driving license, national insurance card and all his student cards.

The rest of the group had stayed in the Travelers bar until closing, and met two girls from Bournemouth, Felicity & Lola, the latter of which gave Matty a piggy back ride after much persuation. Luke was a little bit worse for wear, and spent most of the walk back headbutting shutters and then throwing up on them, which was much to the amusement of the rest of the group. About halfway back to the Hostel, the group passed a Spanish homeless man sitting on a step, who asked if anyone had a cigarette. Luke pulled a straight out of his pocket, held it out and said “Yes, but you’re not having it”, put it in his mouth and walked on.

We all eventually hit the hay around 2-3am, and looked forward to our penultimate day in Barcelona.

Most of us rose bright and early around 10am and headed out to grab some food, as we had, once again, missed breakfast at the hostel. Visiting our local ‘newsagent’, I decided it was time to invest in a bottle of Absinthe which I had been eyeing up to bring back to my friends at University back home. €20 later and the litre of green 85% vol. intoxicating liquor of death was mine. Mark and Adam went for a potato-pie ready meal each, which they took back to the hostel and proceeded to attempt cooking in the Microwave, which resulted in an absolutely revolting smell filling the hostel lobby, which the staff didn’t seem to appreciate one little bit.

Luke was one of the few who remained in bed until after midday, at which point the rest of us had had enough and proceeded to start pulling him out of bed, legs first, until he agreed to get up. We left the hostel around 1 and headed for the train station, to catch a train to Sant Cugat, as Oli Benet had kindly provided us with directions to the mellow chrome kink rail as seen in Teem. Arriving in Sant Cugat, we knew we had to find the cinema, but didn’t really know in which direction to go, so started asking random locals. Having spoken to over 15 spaniards, with not one knowing a single word of English, we gave up and decided to find it ourselves.

We arrived in a town square, which contained two items of interests for us. The first was a supermarket, and the second was a low rail on top of a wall, leading off some steps. After grabbing some food and drink in the supermarket, we skated the rail for a bit. Polhill was first up, with a royale. Jamie attempted a royale straight afterwards, but fell and injured his knee and hip.

After being told to leave by a council worker, who ironically spoke English and gave us directions to the cinema, we were on the way. After a 20 minute walk, we reached the cinema, but not before passing a gap to drop rail that Reynolds and Polhill had a good look at, but decided to pass on until we’d skated the kink.

When we got to the rail, Polhill had his skates on in an instant and quickly landed royale through the kink first try, followed by Topsoul and Topacid. Matty got a bs farvh first try, and Guy landed both bs and fs farvh, and Reynolds landed a royale, and then did it again, switching it to bs farvh on the down rail. Adam started with a bs farvh, and eventually landed a bs torque through the rail after a few attempts.

With it being my first kinked rail, I was a bit skeptical, but landed royale through it first try. As people started trying more difficult tricks, Aaron ‘Stuntman’ Polhill came out of nowhere and realized he’d forgotten his common sense at home. One disaster front farvh later, and he was sat on the floor at the bottom of the rail. Not one to be put off by something as insignificant as pain, he was quickly back on his feet (skates) and attempted the trick again.

He wasn’t quite so lucky on the second attempt, slipping up on the rail, and falling straight onto his tailbone, leaving him in a world of pain, writhing on the floor, and eventually crawling up to a nearby bench and writhing in pain there instead. This fall was enough to put Polhill out of action for the remainder of the trip, but hats off to him, the trick (well, the attempted trick) was pretty nuts.

Fish was busy elsewhere, sessioning a nipple high flat rail, landing a few royales, and then proceeded to skate the nearby stair set with Matty.

The session then progressed into runs involving the ledge and stair set. I managed to get a 270 truespin fs farvh to 270 truespin miszou on the ledge, which I was pretty chuffed with.

After Fish and Guy finished totem pole dancing around nearby flagpoles, we headed back for the train station, stopping at the disaster drop rail mentioned earlier. Reynolds considered it, but decided it was just too risky to try, which I don’t think anyone blamed him for.

When we arrived back at the town square, people had different opinions on where to go/what to do next. First and foremost, Polhill wanted to go to hospital to get his wrist checked out, believing it to be broken. Fish was determined to skate a huck to ledge he’d spotted earlier, and Jamie and Kat wanted to go to L’aqvarium (an aquarium) to take a break from the skating. Myself and Reynolds decided to go with Jamie and Kat, and Polhill came back to Barcelona with us to go to hospital, whereas the rest of the group went off to skate Fish’s ledge.

On the way back to the train station, we passed the Sant Cugat golf couse, where Reynolds revealed that his profession is the upkeep of the grass on golf courses, which is mostly concerned with the putting green. After a 10 minute conversation about different grass types, and methods used to cut greens as finely as possible, we moved on and eventually made it back to the train station, where we caught the train back to Catalunya. We headed back to the hostel, where Polhill got directions to the hospital, and the rest of us grabbed a bite to eat.

We eventually left and headed for Port Vell, and split up with Polhill about halfway down La Rambla, who insisted he go on his own and didn’t want any of us helping him find the hospital. After watching a breakdancing group perform near the bottom of La Rambla, we headed over to Port Vell and to the aquarium.

It took us a good 15 minutes to figure out where we actually needed to pay. After walking around the aquarium ‘lobby’ for a while, someone finally informed us that tickets had to be bought at a kiosk outside the main building. After finding the little blue kiosk, we discovered that the tickets were not €9, as had been advertised in the hostel, but €16. Some quick re-considering ensued, but we were assured that it was worth the price by the kiosk operator, and proceeded to all buy a ticket each and head inside.

The majority of the aquarium was under the sea level of Port Vell, so we had to descend a long, mellow ramp, halfway down which we all posed for a photo in front of gigantic fossilized shark jaws. The first few rooms of the aquarium were pretty standard, consisting mainly of smaller fish. Flash photography was not allowed, hence the photos being a bit blurred.

The highlight of the aquarium visit occurred when we reached the underwater tunnel, where the visitors walked along a glass tunnel which winded straight through the middle of a very large tank, full of bigger fish and tiger sharks!

Within minutes of reaching the tunnel, we witnessed a rare shark attack, where one of the huge tiger sharks attacked one of the smaller fish in the tank. There was an explosion of blood, and a flurry of fins as the smaller fish swam off, leaving a trail of blood through the tank. Along with several other excited visitors, we followed the fish as best we could, but eventually lost sight of it in the depths of the tank. Now about halfway through the tunnel, we stopped at a big convex window, where visitors could put their head out into the tank and get an even better view. This is where Jamie quite literally had a staring contest with one of the larger fish in the tank. After staring at each other for over 5 minutes, Jamie decided he was “more worthy” of the win than the fish, as the fish was stuck in the tank and Jamie wasn’t. Having “better things to do”, Jamie cut his losses and left the fish staring into blank space.

Moving through the tunnel, watching the sharks and stingrays swimming around, we came across a Swedish couple, and the first thing I heard them say was “Det är så mycket blod!”, which translates to “There’s so much blood!”. Seems we’d caught up with the shark-attack victim fish again, which was now pinned face down between some rocks, twitching to its death.

Jamie and Kat stayed with the Swedish couple to watch the fish die, whilst Reynolds and I carried on through the tunnel, getting scarily close to some of the sharks, and getting a great look at the larger stingrays in the tank. Eventually getting tired of waiting for Jamie and Kat, we went back and got them, and eventually reached the end of the tunnel. After watching some seahorses swimming around, we climbed aboard an escalator, which took us back to above sea level, where we arose out of a yellow submarine!

The majority of things on this level were aimed at kids, such as a mini playground and educational computer touch screens with games or information about underwater life.

As we walked into the next room, we were greeted by a tank full of penguins. Having been lucky enough to watch the shark attack earlier, we were now lucky enough to watch an entire penguin mating ceremony, from start to finish, which was rather amusing.

After a PA announcement announcing that the aquarium would be closing in 10 minutes, we rushed past the stingray, piranha and iguana tanks, and spent 5 minutes or so wandering around the gift shop. As we got outside, it was now dark, and everyone felt pretty hungry. I headed to Carrefour with Reynolds to get some pizza, whilst Jamie and Kat headed back to the hostel. Once we’d got the pizzas and some drinks, we headed back to the hostel, where we cooked the pizzas in the rotating grill whilst a live DJ played music in the hostel lobby.

The others returned, and I got a summary of the events which followed after Polhill, Reynols, Jamie, Kat and I had left the others in the town square of Sant Cugat. Fish had decided to skate a ledge he had spotted, and after 20 or so tries, he almost ended up hitting a policeman, who had arrived to ask them to stop skating and move on. Being quite pleased not to have been arrested, everyone jumped on the train and headed back to Barcelona, getting off at Catalunya and heading straight for McDonalds to get some food, at which point they then returned to the hostel.

Polhill had happily wandered off in the direction of the hospital after leaving us in La Rambla, but ended up in Parall.el, where he ran into American traveller Jeff Colada and the Swiss rollerbladers we’d previously met in Forum. After getting directions to the hospital in a pharmacy, he made it to the hospital, only to find that it was practically impossible to find an English-speaking doctor or nurse. After waiting for over an hour, he eventually managed to get his wrist x-rayed, and was told in broken English that his wrist was “not broken, but badly hurt”, which Polhill interpreted as it being sprained.

While Reynolds and I ate our Pizzas, Kat and Jamie were busy consuming a bottle of vodka, and in exchange for some pizza I managed to get some, which I drank merrily with some orange juice. With everyone being pretty tipsy at this point (the others had also been drinking after returning from skating), some in-depth conversations about life were had, followed by jokes and barrels of laughter.

A hostel worker we nicknamed ‘Pedro’ (see picture) came up to ask us to be quiet, and kept a serious face for all of about four seconds, only for him to explode into action, shouting something along the lines of “I’m kidding, I’m here to join the party!” with a Spanish-American accent. We handed him a couple of drinks, and he had a long conversation with Mark about cameras and filming, and he eventually left, at which point we all went to bed.

Crawling out of bed around 9:30am to make the breakfast, we discovered that some idiot had broken the toaster, and hence there was no bread, so Doug, Wiggy and I settled for shitty Spanish cereal with warm UHT milk. We went back to the room, had a shower and started packing, as it was our last day in Barcelona.

Deciding not to skate, everyone packed their skates, and we headed out of the hostel around 11. We decided to experience the city a bit, and headed out on La Rambla to hit some shops.

After heading down a small side street, we found some shops selling ‘street’ clothes, where most of the group went nuts. Matty and Luke both ended up spending more than €200 each on clothes, and a few others bought some t-shirts and hoodies.

After splitting up into a group of two, Worner, Polhill, Galwas and Guy went to the travellers bar, whereas Dre, Reynolds, Matty and Luke went souvenir shopping, and spent some time haggling with crazy Spanish shop keepers.

Doug and Wiggy never left the hostel, and spent the morning wooing the German girls, whereas Kat, Jamie and Fish got up later than everyone else, headed down to Port Vell and then got a bicycle taxi back. Everyone eventually returned to the hostel, where a game of 5-a-side football was held on the terrace, in which a small metal shed got completely annihilated by people crashing into it.

Food was needed around 8pm, and Polhill spoke of a ‘beer and burger’ offer he’d seen in the travellers bar, so we all went down there and had a big meal on our final night, complete with drinks and plenty of photography going on.

We stayed almost until closing, and headed back to the hostel. Leaving the hostel around 1am, we got on the last metro train and made it to the bus station, only to find that it was actually closed, meaning we had to wait outside the doors until it opened. We crashed out on our bags in a big group right outside the doors, and amongst other highlights, Worner fell asleep on Polhills shoulder, and a conversation about anal sex was had. A few of us had alcohol with us, so we sat there and got drunk until our bus arrived at around 3am.

We got to Girona airport around 4:30am, and eventually boarded the plane at 6am, by which time the sun was rising, and landed in Bristol at 8am.

The trip was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Even though I got fairly injured, I still had a great time skating, and I met some really amazing people. On the last day of the trip, I got everyone to write a little summary of their experience in Barcelona, which make up the following section.

Adam

This is my second trip to Barcelona, and one of the best weeks of my life. I made so many new friends and had so much fun skating the perfect spots Barcelona has to offer. I will remember this week for a very long time. The funniest moment for me was when Worner found the remote control car.

Jamie

OK… Barcelona 2007 was sick as fuck, but nothing as good as 2008. I love Barcelona, I love Barcelona, I love Barcelona. Matty is fucking cool man, Fish, always a pleasure, D.R.E., sooo good at ledge, Kernow boys funny as always. Reynolds man, sick style. Adam never met before, but glad I did. Worner AKA cameraman, on the footage as always, basically loved it.

Hot weather,
Good food,
Good times.

Jamie, BCN ‘08

Doug

Loved it so much, the most funny, amazing trip of my life, new amazing friends, amazing spots that I couldn’t skate because of my screwed ankle but it didn’t matter one bit. Love to all and will miss all the boys, rep Fish, Matt, Adam, D.R.E., Luke, Jamie & Kat, nice to meet you all.

Crazy good times,

Doug G xx (29/03/2008, 00:03am)

Guy

Barcelona 2008…
The best trip ever!! Quality laughs and quality skates. Made friends with some awesome people and had some of the best times of my life. My ribs are gonna need a week to recover I’ve laughed so much this week. Cheers to everyone for coming and making the trip what it was. I CAN’T WAIT FOR NEXT YEAR!!!

I love you guys xxx

Guy Millership

Matty

Basically the best time of my life. Some proper gangbanging tricks went down so many stories and talks about raging hardons, piss and shit. So many memories man. Can’t remember how many tricks have gone down on this trip. Mark finding a car was so funny. This was a serious intense trip and I have had the best time ever, can’t wait ‘til next year, def coming back. Made so many cool mates, the gangbanging has been so deep.

Peace out

The lil wigga Matty

Reynolds

Well what can I say, first time away without the parents and couldn’t have been with a better group of friends. One of the best experiences of my life and wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. Not looking forward to the flight home, but looking forward to getting away from black Mike. Hope to do it next year.

James R

A follow-on of what I wrote on a deeper note, for a person that couldn’t make it at the last minute. Blenches Granddad died just before we came, so a tribute was made to him. Wiggy was able to take his place, a great guy who made us all laugh and made our trip that much more complete. This was more than just a skate trip, this was a life experience.

Luke

Had to be the best week of my life. The majority of the time I found myself laughing so hard, e.g. When me, Matty and Reynolds went for a spliff and met the funniest Indian man ever. Some of the sickest shit has been laced this week, everyone laced hammers. I couldn’t have come with a better group of peeps, definitely coming back next year.

Peeeeeace!

S.W.R.

Luke

Cat

Had a good time, it was great meeting everyone.

Cat

Wiggy

Well, how do I follow a JAKOOSK? BCN 08 has been absolutely amazing, so good to meet so many new people, and to catch up with old ones. There have been some serious hammers thrown. I had one of the best weeks of my life. I’m not gonna big up anybody individual cos you’re all awesome. Will miss the fuck out of you guys and BCN, so sad to go. Sure I will see you all soon.

WORD!

Wiggy xx

Polhill

Barca 08
From the outset it was the best trip. Fri we travelled to Marks and skated Y.M. First day in Barca getting to know everyone was brilliant, everyone showed their true colours and it was the best. The hostel was brilliant, with everything you could ever need. I slammed so hard on the first day, but managed to continue skating. It was so weird, everyone either broke themselves or their blades. The boys are the best group of people you could ever want to meet, Dre, Matty, Worner, Luke, Aaron, Adam, James, Guy, Wiggy, Doug are all top blokes and we will all stay in touch. Crime, prostitutes and hobos are all so abundant in Barca, but everyday was worth a million pounds, I wouldn’t change a thing.

This is life.

Aaron Polhill

To top it all off, two edits by Mark Worner from the trip and a later trip with Ollie Jones, Simon Glover and others:

~ by Andreas on January 29, 2010.