Barking Abbey School

On Saturday April 12th 2003, forty school musicians and five staff embarked on a tiring twenty-four hour coach drive in order to arrive at Callafel, our destination. After leaving Barking at 12pm we finally arrived at Hotel Europe the following day at 1pm, extremely tired but excited.

Many people took advantage of the beautiful weather by dumping their bags in their hotel room and heading out to the pool and the beach. Those who didn’t take the opportunity to soak up the Spanish sun soon regretted it as the weather from Spain decided to exchange with England!

After enjoying the evenings entertainment at the hotel everybody headed to bed for a good nights sleep before embarking on our first full day in Spain and our first concert.

The next day regardless of the weather we took advantage of the local theme park ‘Port Aventure’. Here we had a fun filled day, many of us taking on ‘Dragon Kahn’, one of the largest rides in Europe. We then headed to ‘Hotel Canada’ where we performed for the first time before the Spanish public. After the concert we were graced with many positive comments which raised our confidence even higher.

On Tuesday our group were given a taste of the culture within Barcelona when touring the phenomenal Neu Camp stadium and the amazing Gaudi Cathedral. From here we went on to perform in front of our largest audience of the tour in the Diagonal Mar shopping centre. Again there was a great response to our performance and we were even invited to play there again next year! On reflection we decided that this was our best concert. After the concert we had some time to spend our parent’s hard earned cash in the shopping centre.

Wednesday morning gave us a chance to relax and use the hotel facilities before we headed to the famous ‘Torres Vineyard’ to sample the wonderful wines. In the evening we performed our final concert in Placa Del Patrnat, our only outside venue. Once again we had a large crowd who were impressed by our performance.

School orchestra performance

After showering and changing back at the hotel everybody headed to the disco for their final evening. Our performance on the dance floor was almost as good as our musical performances!!

On our final day we spent the last few hours enjoying the sunshine on the local beach before beginning the gruelling twenty-four hour journey home.

The trip was the first music tour ever undertaken by the school and it was an amazing experience for all involved. We look forward to next year!!!