Friday 22nd - The Crushing Defeat

Today we were greeted with terrible weather, but more importantly, when we walked back to the slip road to Madrid near the shopping complex, it was dead and the complex was closed. An unrealised omen of things to come. Back at the hotel, the girls went to pester people in the car park, while I guarded the bags. After only twenty minutes, they returned with two guys, an English and a Danish student on placement in Spain, having a weekend off. Jamie and Kien were more than happy to drive us all the way to Madrid for some petrol money, but waived that clause when they found out it was for charity.

We were over the moon to be in Madrid so early in the day, but even though we'd been dropped in a bad hitching place, found that nothing mattered any more. As we began the long walk across the city to somewhere we could find a lift, it became apparent that Easter, being the Pagan holiday of fertility and sex, had screwed us. Madrid, the capital of not a small country, was a ghost town. It was like the scene in '28 Days Later', where Cillian Murphey strolls across an empty London, searching for any sign of life. Any car we did see was full of families and people thought we were a joke for trying. When we realised why this was happening, we considered cheating without yet committing, but found that due to Easter, if we weren't on the south coast by tomorrow, we won't even be able to pay for a lift.

More walking and thinking, it hit me that if we didn't cheat, we'd be stranded in Madrid until at least Monday and my flight is on Tuesday. We discussed our options for a while, tired from the hours of crossing the city on foot, and gradually came to a horrid consensus. We group hugged and agreed: this is the end of our hitch.

At the coach station, we encountered more hitchers that came to the same decision, Rory and Sam. We all caught the same night bus to Algeciras where we'll catch a ferry in the morning.