Friday, June 4th

Today I got the day off from work because we are leaving for Bournemouth at 11am. Bournemouth is at the Southern Coast of England and is absolutely beautiful! Felix and Guy are two guys from work that I know who are going down for the weekend. Guy lives there, and also plays volleyball, but did not enter the tournament. Felix and his friend Rob "Flay" entered as pairs representing Loughborough. Rob and his girlfriend Kerry drove down to Bournemouth and a girl called Natalie "Nat" also came along. The drive in total took about three hours and when we got there we put our stuff down at Rob's dad's house and then went straight to the beach! We were lucky enough to be able to stay with Rob for the weekend.

The beach was really pretty and there were huge cliffs and sandy beaches along the English Channel "sea". The beach was actually quite rocky as a result of not sifting the sand that they put on the beach to widen it after dredging. I was afraid of cutting my foot, or falling and cutting my face! It was probably about 4pm by the time we reached the beach, so it was already a bit chilly. We got some fish and chips to eat and played some volleyball.

After the beach we headed to Tesco's to get food for the weekend. We wanted to get s'mores making materials (i.e. chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers), but they didnt have the right chocolate, they don't mke graham crackers in England, and the store was out of marshmallows. So much for making s'mores.

At night we ate pizza in the backyard, called the garden here. It is quite confusing, you see, calling the backyard the garden because when I think of garden I think of plants and butterflies whereas they think a typical backyard. SO strange! Anyway, we sat out in the "garden" for a good bit until the bugs started biting.