Sunday we went to the beach as usual, via discovering that one of the supermarkets was closed on Sundays, and the other had closed before we got there. Never mind, paid higher prices somewhere else...
Before the nights proceedings we met Joe's girlfriend Joelle's friends from London, Marcia and Renee. Classic case of 3 degrees - they'd studied in, or knew, the Canterbury polisci department. And they fed and watered us very well.
Sunday (highlights in bold)
The National - so great to finally see them live. They were in the big tent which totally could have backfired (it almost did due to persistent technical difficulties on that stage) but they pulled it off. The music isn't naturally crowd-moving, but it did succeed and the performance, especially by the vocalist Matt Berninger, was compelling.
Leonard Cohen - wasn't expecting to stick around for all of this, but the show turned out to be quite charming despite the inherent cheesiness of an ultra-polished session band. Played a good mix of the hits (Hallelujah, So Long Marianne) and some that I didn't recognise but did enjoy.
Micah P Hinson - according to Joe his recordings are great, live his three-piece was a little 1998 Rockquest.
Richard Hawley - great old-school rock and roll, full stop. Told us we were the best festival crowd they'd ever played, and for once I believed somebody saying that.
Justice (Live) - absolute madness in and around the big tent, we stayed for about five or six songs including their iconic remix of "Never Be Alone" by Simian.
Morrissey - a disappointment. I'm a big Smiths fan, and for I'm not sure what reason, I always came down on the Johnny Marr side of the band's messy breakup. Maybe it's because I'm a guitarist that loves the way he played on those records, or maybe just because he's not a tosser. Steven is a tosser and his banter (anti-techno, pro-vegetarian, possibly a dash of racism in there), while electrifying the English, was groan-worthy for the rest of us.
After that we went back to camp to drink some more wine, then hit the hay. 7 am wakeup call, packed up our stuff, walked to the station. Thank god for overcast and cool temperatures. Reason for so early was that 20,000 people try to leave Benicassim the day after the festival (camping continues for another 3 days), half each for Barcelona and Valencia, and even though this was the 14th FIB, renfe (Spanish train company) hasn't got the idea that YOU NEED TO PUT ON MORE TRAINS TO COPE WITH DEMAND!!!
We were first in the queue and lucky to have a door right in front of us when the train stopped. After much pushing and jostling Joe and I both managed seats, but the rest of the train filled up completely. The doors kept trying to close and stopping when people were in the way. Eventually the unlucky ones had to step off, resign themselves to the fact they would miss their flights, and we were underway. I felt bad for the Spanish people who then couldn't get on the train later down the line - we FIBers represented at that time the very worst of unsustainable tourism. When we got to L'Aldea an hour later, we piled onto the platform and then onto another regional train 20 minutes later. This one was less full, but filled up to practically overflowing as we approached Barcelona. Talked to some English guys about horse racing.
Arriving at Barcelona Sants 3.5 hours after we left Benicassim was basically a miracle, Joe and I had little idea how we'd managed to arrive both together and safely. The Metro to our hostel was a dream, and the hostel was pretty nice too. After a nap we got some pastries from the place downstairs and some beers from the hostel, and took a walk down the main avenues towards the water, and back again to sleep.
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