Valencia Spain - Foreign Trip
Trip Report
Our party left Tiverton on Friday 15th July and crossed the channel at Dover/Calais crossing. The Kingdom's coach headed down through France to arrive at Macon for our overnight stop arriving in time for a dip in the hotel swimming pool. Away early the next day we crossed into Spain pass all the crowds and support coaches for the Tour de France. Our hotel in Granollers, just outside Barcelona, was excellent with the indoors and outdoor pools receiving visits. The hotel also provided an excellent evening meal. Next day we headed to Barcelona for a tour of the Nou Camp and the spending of alot of euros in their shop. Some boys even bought ladies shirts.
We then proceeded to Valencia's training ground to register for the tournament and to be taken to our accomodation. The apartmemts were excellent and right on the beach. Everybody was soon in the warm sea. Whilst in Valencia we had a free tour of the Mestalla, went to Villereal for a tour of their stadium at the same time as a Champions League inspection team, plus numerous visits to the warm sea. The tournament for our age group was on the astro pitches at Valencia's training ground. The area around our accomodation was lovely and the bars completly Spanish because we were the only English in town.
Our first match resulted in a 6-4 defeat to a side from Eastern Russia. This was an excellent match which could have gone either way. The game was played in the midday heat and it certainly helped the Russians that they had a 20 player squad. The Russians went on to make the Final and their players and parents made friends with us despite their lack of English and ours of Russian. The Spartak Novosibirsk team certainly knew our players names though. On the second day we played Nobles De Zamora from Venezuela which resulted in a 6-1 win. We now had to draw or win to go through 2nd or a defeat would put us in the plate competition. The Spanish team were very friendly before the match and it was a pleasure to play Parque Collegio Santa Ana. The result was 3-0 win to us meaning that later in the day we had to play the favourites from Italy for a place in the semi-finals. Twyford scored first but this seemed to inspire Gold Phoenix who went on to win 7-1. They beat the Russians in the final and we visited the Mestalla again the next day to watch some of the older finals.
On the next day we travelled through the Spanish mountains and deserts to Madrid. The hotel in Madrid is absolutely quality and is used by Real Madrid as a base for home matches and as a home for new players and their families. Both the tours of Athletico and Real Madrid were excellent. Athletico's home is old but Real's looks new and is on a par with Bayern Munich as the best in Europe. The boys and adults enjoyed two visits to the center of Madrid and were showed the sites by an English teacher. The atmosphere in the centre was electric. A cool off in the large hotel pool was a must. Drethe was the only Real player met out of the four living in the hotel. After two nights here we proceeded across more desert before turning south at Zaragoza for the holiday part of the trip at Callella near Barcelona. Before reaching Calella we visited the Nou Camp again to change the ladies shirts for boys ones. Once this was done we toured Barcelona seeing the Cathedral that has never been finished, Los Ramblos and Christopher Columbus statue near the harbour. Calella was a typical Spanish seaside resort but the hotel was good with a pool, evening entertainment and a excellent choice of foods. After 3 nights there we headed towards France and our overnight stop in Lyon. We received an excellent tour of Lyon stadium from a lady from the council's tourist office as they own the ground. It was built by prisoners of war and a new ground is soon to be built. The following day we headed north to Lens for another overnight stop before travelling home. Everybody on the trip behaved very well.
Hotels used were Novotel Macon Nord, Ciutat Granollers Hotel & Spa, Mirasierra Suites Hotel & Spa Madrid, Hotel Bernat 2 Calella, Novotel Lyon Gerland and Novotel Len Noyelles.
The party consisted of Lewis Brooks, Danny Crook, Adam Newson, Ryan Corley, Bradley Kelly, Shea Holland, Thomas Lockyer, David Rawlings, Lewis Hill, Alex Bressington, Yiannis Nikolopoulos, Liam Short, Michael Sandiford, Thomas Parkins, Andy Bressington, Mandy Bressington, Simon Kelly, Paul A'Lee, Gerry Newson and coach driver Russell Kingdom.
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