Friday 20th February 1998

7.15am Arrival at the airport and check-in. Well, it was for nine of us, but Martin Huddleston was still in bed in Guildford. With Anna (with whom Martin was supposed to get a lift) getting ever more agitated, he eventually arrived at 8.15, ten minutes before the flight was due to close. He was then suitably bright and breezy, having had two hours more sleep than the rest of us.

8.55am We finally took off, after Martin Reed had been stopped and virtually strip-searched at baggage check. Even though he's been going through Heathrow every weekend for the last few months, the casual look was obviously not so conducive to being let out of the country. Fortunately the thoroughness of the search stopped just short of the rubber gloves, but it was a very breathless Martin R that finally got onto the plane.

 

L-R: Douglas, Ed, Keith, Sara, Martin R, Liz, Andrew (front), Martin H (rear), Martin F, Anna

We then proceeded to be the noisy lot at the back of the plane, mainly because we had to shout to be heard over the noise of the engines.

Eventually we decided that we should eat something in order to soak up the alcohol, so we headed off for a pizza at a little restaurant balanced somewhat precariously on the side of a chasm. The chasm did actually lead down to a river, but it was a very long way down. Doug extended his admiration for Eastern European women to Central European women and spent the whole time ogling the waitress. Martin R - who's not normally slow on the uptake - can't work out why he can't remember what she looked like. Something to do with the Pivo, maybe?

Back at the ranch we met the Serbian team, headed in spirit by Dejan - thereafter known as "Dan" - who looked like he'd just jumped off a surfboard. From somewhere or other we got the idea that the fluency of his English was attributable to him having spent some time in Los Angeles, but that turned out not to be the case - he's obviously just a good linguist. Doug cracked open the bottle of 12-year-old whisky that he'd bought in Duty Free as a birthday present for his friend Paul in the Czech Republic, and the Serbs introduced us to the delights of "Rakija Prepecenica", their national brand of citrus-based firewater.

Dejan to Ed: "This spliff, man, it was like this big . . ."

The probability of all present getting wasted was at that point pretty high, but the Chesham team decided that it ought to adjourn for a heavy tactics session - a necessity with a team consisting of nine forwards and one back! Surely no one has ever had that many forwards in one team!

Our captain inspires the troops

Our hosts had told us that the pool would be open from eight until ten pm for anyone who wanted to do lane swimming (no Octopush). By 7pm, though, it was dark outside and our unfeasibly early start had caught up on all of us. It felt like it was already past midnight, and we all retired to our beds without further ado.