The Vigo roadie didn’t get off to an excellent start logistically when Matty Thomas’ lift down to Biarritz failed to materialize. We had to drive north up the highway to pick his sorry ass up, not ideal really to add another hour onto your 9-hour car journey just to get back to your departure point; the moral of the story being never trust a photographer.

Anyway, Higson drove about 200km/h in the Focus C Max, across the plains of Spain. There seems to be a thriving dance scene in Spain even right out in the middle of nowhere, Clubs everywhere. Seem to be really popular with truck drivers, I guess dancing is good for the leg circulation or something.

We arrived in Vigo about 1am Thursday night.

We found a great valet parking that night right outside our hotel. Gony said, “Right here’s perfect,” and it was. You just park up, leave. Then they come in a special pick-up truck, pick up your car and tow it away to this special high security car park called the impound. You then wake up the next day, get a taxi out to the impound and it¹s only like 120 euros for the night! Sick.

Once we got the C-Max back Friday was a nice day, warm and pleasant. Even though the internet charts had it dead flat, Higson and I undertook to 2 hour drive north to A Coruna to try and find a beachbreak. We did actually find one west of the city in a beautiful little cove, clear water, with fun little windswell lefts breaking at low tide. Some bodyboarders came out too.

When we walked back up afterwards, fully stoking, I noticed some ‘Bodyboards Only’ graffiti on the path, which is something you don’t see every day.

Friday night was an unaccompanied mission into town coz Youngy and his Galician hosts were knackered and had an early start getting the conny on at Playa Patos. But we didn’t. We hit the town and quaffed several local beers, and made the acquaintance of some young female Galicians. They all seemed to be really stoked on Higson’s vibe, particularly one that looked a bit like a chipmunk. They took it in turns to sit next to him while he rapped in fluent Spanish. It’s not every day those chicas get to meet a Lake Geneva local.

Later, when we tried to get into a club we got denied by one of the most un-hard looking bouncers you’ve ever seen. He had those wack Del Pierro sideys and one of those really thin pencil-line goatee systems. He told us it was a private party, meanwhile the general public, including throngs of hotties poured in and out. Higson got pretty angry and threatened the guy, “You can forget about ever getting waves in Lake Geneva punk, you’re finished! You’re f-ing done, son!” went the taunts.

We were allowed in to the gay club next door though, which wasn’t all that good. Matty bailed straight away, I waited about an hour and a half while Higson danced on the podium, then we left.

Saturday was a beauty, 22 degrees, sunny, light offshores and a little groundswell for the VQS Duck Fish contest at Playa Patos. We showed up with some copies of the mag to stoke the Patos groms out with.

There’re all these offshore island at Patos that block the swell, so on the advice of Gony we took a little drive south towards the Portuguese border and scored a head high right point and left reef. It’s really an amazing coastline there, little terraced fields, monasteries overlooking the ocean, not many people about. Just because we were in the middle of nowhere didn’t stop Higson getting action. I had my wetsuit on and was running down the path to the left when I heard a car beeping its horn. “What’s he done now, the kook?” I thought, assuming Higson had blocked the road or something. But no, it was simply two farmer’s daughters giggling, waving and checking out Higson’s heiney, who was standing by the side of the road in his cacks. The farmers daughters were fulling digging his scene. About an hour later, Higson celebrated his elevated social status in the region by dropping in on the only other guy out at the left, a friendly local.

I ate yet more bits of potato tortilla on bread, I had probably around a kilo of that over the three days. Breakfast is a large pastry that looks like a croissant but is glazed solid and you eat it with a knife and fork, then it’s pretty much tortillas till bedtime.

Saturday night was pretty big out in Vigo. Higson knocked my Vodka Tonic all over Chipmunk’s arm, which was pretty funny. Because we were accompanied by the Vigo mafia we got in to a straight club this time, which was nice.

PE