Mark Arbuckle: Glasgow, July 2023

As Summer holidays are now in full swing, I am reminded of my first ever foreign holiday, to Benidorm in August 1975.

I’d been to Malta the previous year but that was for an International Schools Basketball tournament and didn’t really count as a holiday.

Peter, my great friend, who’d already been there with his family three times before, suggested that we go to Benidorm.

‘The land of Sun, Sex and Sangria!’ He enthusiastically announced!

So off we went to Budget Holidays to book our adventure. It cost us £50 each for a fortnight! 

Fifty squid, flights and Full Board!
But there was a catch – isn’t there always?
We were flying from Luton!

‘No problem’ said Peter ‘It’s only eight hours on the bus!
We’ll have a great time!’

I have no memory of this journey but we duly arrived without incident at the fabulous Torre Dorada Hotel.

The Torre Dorada had been built in the late sixties so was still well appointed with mosaic tiles and lots of wooden slatting.

Think ‘James Bond’ 60’s location setting and you won’t be far wrong.
At night they would use the lighting in the windows to spell out TD in sixty foot high gold letters.

Things got better when we were shown to a huge guest room, we were especially impressed with the fancy welcome pack – a fresh fruit basket, chocolate and a bottle of wine… just for us! 

As it turned out we were in the wrong room, but unfortunately for the hotel we were only informed after we’d scoffed the fruit and downed the wine!

We excitedly got ready for our first night out on the town!

Now being an almost total rookie traveller I’d packed suits, dress shirts and shoes, along with cas-yool attire in my two 40kg cases! 

For the first night I chose a pair of bespoke black all wool hi-waisted flares, a short sleeve white shirt and black leather platform clogs (the most lethal footwear known to man!)

Then off we tottered…. two bams into the balmy evening.

We visited a few bars, had a few beers and I had my first taste of Sangria. It was fine but I preferred the barman’s suggestion of gin and lemon and crushed ice in a tall glass!
Yummy!

We met a crowd from Wales and ended up going back to their hotel for a party. It was all very (mostly) innocent – dancing and drinking and we ended up crashing there for the night.

However, when we sauntered back to our hotel the next morning we were met by a furious travel rep.
Our crime being that we’d missed the ‘Welcome Meeting’ (where they attempt to sell you overpriced excursions!), they had even opened our room to discover unslept-in beds and were about to phone the police when we strolled in!

A red faced manager was summoned and began to chastise us in Spanish….we just laughed and told him ‘To Go Forth and……!’

It was time for some sunshine…. so we quickly changed and headed for the beach.
En-route, we saw a shop and thought it would be wise to buy something to keep us hydrated. We each selected a 1.5L bottle of fizzy orange juice (no bottled water in those days) and this is how the conversation with the shopkeeper went…

He wrapped them in brown paper bags and we headed down the steep hill to the beach where we paid one Peseta each for a blue canvas sun-bed in a 6′ x 3′ space alongside two hundred other people squeezed in like sardines!
We endured that for an  hour but then moved further along the beach to an area NOT run by slave traders!

We happily fell into a routine of sunbathing in the morning then walking into Benidorm Old Town during the afternoon. Then got ready to hit the bars and nightclubs after dinner.

On our second afternoon as we were passing a General Store, which was just reopening after siesta, the owner pulled up the heavy metal awning and caught me on the right arm, slicing it open! It wasn’t that deep but there was a lot of blood!
He was horrified and rushed me into his shop, apologising profusely, and treated my wound with vodka and a towel before putting a large plaster on it.

Peter said he’d rather the guy had given us the bottle of vodka instead of wasting it on arm!
This was met by a glare from me.

To impress the girls the ‘story’ about my injured arm got more elaborate and heroic as the week went on…..

There was five of them, one had a knife!
We’d had a motorcycle accident in the mountains!
We’d been scuba diving and I’d been stung by a jelly fish etc, etc

TIO PEPE- FOCKINK- TIA MARIA! 
Haha very creative!

As we sat at the bar sipping our cold beers a very attractive mid-twenties lady joined us and seemed to be very taken with Peter.
After about 15 minutes of flirting, I was getting bored and I noticed a large green, scaly beetle trundling along the bar so I gave it a flick….right down Peter’s shirt front! He shrieked and pulled at his shirt! The attractive woman, looking quite alarmed, made her excuses and left….sorry mate!

However, Peter went from Zero to Hero the following night.

We were sitting poolside at the same hotel having a drink. It was pretty dark where we were.

There was a family party taking place on the open area next to the bar. We noticed that a young girl of maybe five years old had wandered away from her parents and was walking around the pool towards our table. She tried to squeeze past a tree next to us, tripped and went into the water! It was only about 4 feet deep but she immediately sank out of sight.

Peter calmly stood up and with fag still firmly clamped in his teeth, knelt down and scooped her out of the pool! 

The wee soul was shocked and spluttering and when she got her breath back she let out an ear splitting scream…..which finally alerted her parents!
Her dad came running over taking in the scene of Peter still holding his screaming daughter. For a second I thought he was misreading the situation and was going to attack Peter! 

Then he saw the water dripping from his terrified wee girl and realised what had happened!
He took her from Peter and hugged her! ‘Gracias! Gracias!’ Mi Bebé he repeated over and over whilst carrying her back to her now hysterical mother.

The entire incident lasted less than a minute but if we hadn’t been nearby…….???

Five minutes later he returned with two large drinks for us. He hugged us and repeated his ‘Gracias! Gracias! Mi Bebé mantra.

At the end of our first week we met four English guys who had just arrived at The Torre Dorada. When I say met, our first encounter was avoiding water balloons being hurled at us by them from their fifth floor balcony, as we approached the main entrance.
Fortunately, their aim was crap and none of them hit us but we threw a few expletives back their way anyhow!

We saw them again at dinner the following night and they introduced themselves.
Nev, Nige, Hawwy and Bawwy, all ‘suvveners’ from Luton.

We weren’t sure what they were doing there – as all they did was moan about the food, the heat, the mosquitos, the hotel staff can’t speak english etc, etc….

They were amazed that Peter and I were having such a great time.

One time Nige invited us to go to an English Bar in the old town that they’d ‘found’, “It’s brilliant” he said. “You can get a full English Breakfast all day long and they serve English Beer and have English music on the jukebox!” 
“We’re going tonight to play darts and pool!”

Peter and I couldn’t think of anything WORSE and politely declined. We then invited them to join us around our usual bars and nightclubs but they refused all our suggestions.

We didn’t see them again until the middle of the week and by then they had come up with an escape plan.
They were so miserable and bored that they had drawn lots and the two lucky winners, Nev and Bawwy, were going to ‘swap’ flight tickets with Peter and I so that they could go home at the end of their first week and we could stay on for a third week!

We were ecstatic and agreed immediately.
Spending money might be tricky, but Peter reckoned he could get his Dad to wire some cash.

All sorted…..

There was only one problem.
‘Computer says NO!’ 

Or rather their friendly holiday rep did! 
‘You can’t change the names on your tickets, the travel company won’t allow it!’ he gleefully explained to the two crestfallen guys.

Ach well it had been a nice idea for about two hours.

We continued to enjoy our days on the beach and our nights out at the pubs and clubs.

The music was great:

Typically Tropical by Barbados
I’m Not In Love 10cc
Jive Talkin’ Bee Gees
Disco Stomp by Hamilton Bohannon
Have You Seen by The Chi-Lites…..and many, many more

All too soon our holiday was coming to an end.

On our last day Nev, Nige, Hawwy and Bawwy threw us a leaving party! They were finally beginning to enjoy themselves! 

We started drinking about 3pm and the coach didn’t pick us up until midnight!
We were pretty inebriated come the witching hour!

We slept fitfully on the flight and arrived at Luton Airport around 6am. Now we had to get the 7.30am bus back to Glasgow!

But no boring M1/M6 direct route for this driver….Oh No

He took every back country road he could find and appeared to stop at every third farm house and village restroom he came across….
The journey to Killermont Bus Station took 11 bleedin’ hours!

Aaaand now we still had to get the train back to Clydebank!

Peter and I were absolutely shattered as we’d now been travelling for 22 hours!

We didn’t see each other for about a week and then met for a pint and a debrief.
We laughed a lot and agreed that apart from the horrific journey home we’d had a memorable holiday, so good in fact that we planned to repeat it the following year!!

But sadly it never happened!  

College, work, impending marriages and life got in the way……