Mark & Cath's trip to a provincial Spanish rally.

We first arrived in the town of Posada at about 3:00pm, with no visible signs of the rally ( or the ‘ concentration of motos’, as they call them in Spain) to be held there - apart from the one banner going across the street announcing the event we would have been convinced that we had gone to the wrong town. A few hours later a few bods turned up and opened the gates to the municipal pool grounds that was doubling as a temporary campsite.

The rally was to start 9:00am Saturday morning so we had to ask if it was ok to pitch our tent there for the night.  Their English matched my Spanish…..about half a dozen words each!!  They understood that we were from the UK, which did take them by surprise!

While we pitched our tent, two other bikes turned up – four friends from Valencia ( a bit disappointed I think, to find that they were not the first bike on site, ours was!!)  They were Rosa, whose English was a lot better than our Spanish, her husband, and two of his friends.  We spoke briefly, they pitched their tents and left. Mark and I enjoyed a few beers and retired to our tent, anticipating what the next few days were going to be like.

The next morning we went to the café for breakfast, and watched as the rally started to spring to life – it was a council run event, if you can imagine, and there were men setting up fencing and barriers etc all over the place.  Stalls were going up etc.

9:00 am came – booking in time.  What fun – all the usual questions, name, address, make of bike, registration number, distance travelled, but all in Spanish.  We muddled our way through it with the help of a guy from the village, now living in Ibiza, who learned English while living in Germany!!!

We handed in our forms and paid our 30 Euro. They then gave us a goodie bag each, containing a freshly prepared ham baguette, a bottle of olive oil produced in the village, a vestie top for me, a t-shirt for mark, rally badges, pens, pencils, sweets,  stickers and lots of bits and bobs like that.  The rally ticket came with tear-off-tabs attached, each one meant either a free meal, free drink, or a combination of both.

So we sit around for a bit, talking to our new friends, admiring all the bikes, and then at 2:00pm we had a procession into the town square, about 200 bikes, all beeping and flashing going a snails pace through the entire town, all the town out on the pavement and balconies, all waving and clapping as we go through.  When we reach our destination we are given a large bowl of paella and a beer to sit and enjoy with the rest.  After a while we head back toward the rally and stopped at a nearby café where we are told that the next ticket to use is a free mid afternoon beer here.

Back to the campsite for a quick wash and brush up, meet our friends, have some beers, and then at about 9:00pm it was time to use the next ticket…..a BBQ, beer, and desert!!!

Sunday – more ride outs, more food and drink!!!   We left the rally site in a convoy of about 200 bikes, and set out on some wonderful country roads.  First stop after about 15 miles, tapas and beer, back on the bikes to ride for about 10 miles on more lovely roads, next stop a ham baguette and a fanta, off we go again.  This time we ride off through the country and eventually arrive back at the rally.  Now it is time for the raffle, which is interesting for us because we don’t know what ticket number 573 sounds like in Spanish!!! Lucky for us our closest to an English speaker Emilio is at hand to tell us if our number is called!

After an hour of fun and games, we get on the bike for the final part of the event………a three course formal sit-down dinner at a very plush hotel.  No I am not kidding you, it is for real.

We use our last tear-off tab to get in to the venue.  For every six people seated there was a bottle of red wine, a bottle of white wine, bottles of lemonade, orangeade and water, and the waiters were constantly hovering with cans of lager.  I watched as the table next to us finished off the bottle of red before the main course arrived, and watched as the waiter replaced it with another, and then another after desert!!!

Awards next – the only time our mileage has ever been in the running…1750 kilometres.  All our little group were chanting Marco, Marco ……. And the furthest travelled goes to ………. Some little shite who had come from BERLIN!!!!!!  How dare he!! – I think we should have counted the ferry miles into the total….

Full to the brim, we made our way back to the campsite to pack up.  We said our good byes to our new best friends, and they really were, lots of kisses and hugs later we headed off in the direction of Constantia. 

We are now making plans to go back to the rally next year!!!