Friday 16 October

The 2009 Menorca tour was soon upon us and this year we were back touring as Barnsley CC, after a one year break touring as the Rawdon Gents CC due to unforeseen circumstances.

New tourers came in the form of Jordo (a man mountain from Geelong, Australia), Ben Hampshire (a 17 year old from Barnsley), Liam Tegg (a posh lad from Kent) and Sam Kennett (a pizza hut chef also from Kent).

The plane got off on time so there was only time for a brace in the airport bar. The 3 x 330ml cans of Stella for £10 on board seemed very expensive, even more so when Benny didn’t buy his round. It was agreed that we would got to San Luis on the way to the apartments to get Lunch and a week’s supply of cigs. RL and Ives stocked up with 200 each but Benny only bought 40, surely that couldn’t last him for 7 days, could it?

Mr and Mrs Bong Head had done as they did the previous year and flown out on the Tuesday. They reported that the weather had been very windy and they hadn’t been in the pool yet, but with “Scorchio” weather forecast for the week ahead none of us were worried. The new Friday tradition is to head to John Morley’s villa to catch up with old friends and get some ale in. Everyone fancied a dip in the pool but it was too windy. Greg Batty didn’t let us down and had a 5 minute splash.

Another Friday tradition is the meet and greet at the Tennis club bar in the S’algar complex which normally has 1 person working and you cannot get served, but it was a lot better this year and we caught up with many old faces including Dave Greener a former tour member but is now in charge of the bar for Menorca CC.

At around 9.00pm ten year tour veterans, RL and Benny realised the importance of the match the next day and decided to retire to bed so they would be fresh for the next morning. The rest of the party carried on drinking at the bar in the square until the early hours. Disgraceful!