Benicassim 17-19/7

On the Friday we set out from the van area to a bus put on by the festival to go to the beach. Heaps of other festival goers had the same idea (it's what you do in sunny Spain) so when we got there it was heaving. There was still enough room to find a spot and have a swim though, very nice. We also had lunch at a local hotel which turned out to be pretty reasonable in price. Kirsten was very impressed with her calamari. We went back to the campsite where a bit of a storm started to develop. By mid evening it was developing into a gale. There were also a lot of sirens in the distance as it looked like something was on fire just beyond the confines of the whole site (we never did find out what it was). We ventured out to see a bit of Paul Weller on the main stage, the sound was affected quite a lot by the wind and he ended up cutting his set short due to the weather. It was very blustery, dirty and starting to get cold by this point. Kirsten returned to the van while I stuck it out for another hour waiting to see if Kings of Leon would play but unfortunately that was it for the evening as event organisers deemed it unsafe for bands to continue. The campsite was strewn with rubbish and crap flying everywhere by this stage, heaps of dust and sand had come in through our roof vent. The next morning it was calm again but there was litter, trashed tents, debris and belongings all over the place. We spent the day in the van trying to catch up on a bit of sleep before we saw our first Spanish band of the evening, Unfinished Sympathy who were quite entertaining. Next up was supposed to be Lilly Allen but she was a no show due to illness. Maximo Park played instead, which was quite good as they were meant to play after Kings of Leon the night before. Lots of fun and onstage antics. Elbow were on next, a really good performance from them, I'd say better than Roskilde although I admit I did fall asleep during some of their set at Roskilde due to the late nights. Franz Ferdinand finished off the bands component for Saturday night and they got the capacity crowd jumping to 'This Fire' in particular, they were clearly enjoying themselves and the crowd lapped it up. Our last day at Benicassim was another warm one, we first set out to see Calexico at about 8pm, then TV on the Radio on the same stage so that was good for a bit of relaxing in one spot. TVotR played a great set. We'd not seen them before having missed this year's Adelaide Big Day Out. They were well worth seeing. Second to last we saw the Psychedelic Furs, who I was quite looking forward to. They sounded pretty good, it was funny as their singer seemed to be surprised that people were applauding and getting into it. They played the obligatory 'Pretty in Pink' - well too. The last band for us on the night was The Killers and I have to admit I was surprised at how good they were. I think it helped that a 60% or so British crowd (who love them) probably brought out their best and they performed really well. Once again, I forgot how many hit singles this band has had and they went through most of them with some huge singalong moments from the crowd, they absolutely lapped it up. We retired to the van very worn out but pretty elated by everyone we'd managed to see over the four days. Leaving Benicassim on the Monday we were able to get a new spare tyre but the local garage was unable to help us with our starter motor issues, we are hoping we can get it sorted in Barcelona.