Breakfast at the hotel and then the driver took us to the city of Anuradhapura where we hired some bikes the driver thought we were mad because we followed his minibus around the ancient city. I now know that I can not be a Buddhist because I can't walk barefooted on hot sand and paving slabs i spent most of the day hopping from one shady bit to another - after a while we were templed-out and I had a puncture and it wasn't worth calling in the support team so I just jumped into the bus. The night before at the Buddhist temple we met a man who was proud of his son because he had one hand with 6 fingers and 6 toes on each foot and at one of today's temples we met them again - they live in the south but had come up to worship. A lot of people were praying for good results for their children's exams.

I had bought a Sri Lankan pair of trousers in Kandy on the Friday and unknowingly I wore them for most of the day inside out.

At the hotel we had 3 meals, a room, bike hire and drinks for £16.50 each -unbelievable.

On the return journey we stopped at a bakery where I had a 2 litre bottle of water, a savoury slice, a coconut cake and a snickers for 75p.