Woke this morning in luxury of Hotel Diplomatic in Benidorm. Hotel is so nice I don´t want to leave. Must bookmark this place for future reference, might even stay here on return trip.

Decided over breakfast to stay extra day here with John. Glen decided to ride on to Algercias. Got on hotel internet this morning but computer crashed a few times, usually just before I had completed long post.

Watched Sky News this morning and saw how bad weather was in Devon with reports of people stranded in their cars for several hours outside Exeter. I knew my wife Ann had a hospital appointment in Exeter yesterday so I was obviously concerned that she was OK. Glad to hear this morning that she had got home safely although our home in Devon is still cut off to all vehicles apart from 4x4s. Friends and neighbours have rallied around to help my wife both from the point of view of the extreme weather and also knowing that I am away. To any of them reading this blog, a big thank you from me.

Late morning, John and I went for a walk around Benidorm. The place has a reputation of Union Jacks and Lager Louts but at this time of year we appeared to be the only people under the age of 60 in town. It is like Eastbourne has just been moved south. The shops etc were surprisingly upmarket to what we had expected with very few tacky tourist type places although this may reflect the better part of town we are in.

So we went in search of tacky tourist attractions. :)

On the sea front we found a bar with a resident singer who looked at least 75. We passed on that and further down the sea front was alovely bar with two country singers complete with guitars aand cowboy hats. Every other customer was wrapped up with thick jackets, scarves and hats and I´m sat there in sandals, thin tropical trousers and very thin breathable t-shirt. After a few drinks the singers sounded good.

No mileage today but total trip mileage is now 1,549 miles to date.

The principal reason for this trip is to raise money for the road building in The Gambia. At last count my www.justgiving.com/sidhorman showed GBP 911 plus GBP 227 Gift Aid giving GBP 1,138. To this must be added GBP 750 due from Barclays Matched Fundraising giving a total of GBP 1,888. I also have commitments from other people who will pay up when I have completed the trip so I look on target to reach my minimum target of GBP 2,000.

For anyone who wants to follow our trip in real time, we are carrying satelite transmitter beacons which relay our positions onto Google maps. For reasons of security, we are not posting this on to the public domain but any friends can contact my wife for further details. For those friends on http://www.ukgser.com/ they can contact my very good friend Proff who will sort them out access.

After a few drinks listening to the country singers we moved on to the Western Saloon where they will be p`laying this evening. I foolishly challenged John to a game or two of pool thinking he was too old to be any good. Despite not having his satnav with him, John managed to find his way around a pool table and managed to beat me by 3 games to 2.

Got back to hotel and found out I can in fact upload photos on to this blog. Hopefully I have manged to attach some not just to this post but also to the previous ones.:)

Andres has just arrived in the hotel as I´m posting this. Roger and the other group should be here shortly so I will update again later this evening.

Back again. Roger and others arrived and soon we were all in the bar comparing notes on our journey so far. We then adjourned to a nearby Chinese restaurant and had an excellent meal.