The Lions: A Welsh fan's diary

By Gavin Clague A Welsh fan's Lions diary

Gavin Clague and his travelling companion Eirian Rees were amongst the thousands of British and Irish Lions fans in South Africa.

They kept diaries of their exploits on the tour - and Gavin, who is a doctor and a groom-to-be, brings us his final instalment.

Monday, 6 July 21:00

Gavin (left) and Eirian are originally from Ammanford in Carmarthenshire

I'm back home now after a brilliant tour. The boys played superbly on Saturday and everyone agreed, even the home supporters, that the Lions had finally trounced the Boks.

It was just such a shame it came too late. We had great tickets, Shane kindly scored both his tries right in front of us and everyone was chuffed for him.

Although he got man-of-the-match, Flutey and Heaslip had cracking games as well and were unlucky to miss out.

Despite the series already being won by the Boks, doing the whitewash was very important to their fans.

Most of them we spoke to are dubious of De Villier's tactics at the best of times and the 10 changes he made didn't help.

The win was the least the Lions deserved though and it made for a great night in the bar with both sets of fans having something to sing about.

After a couple of vodka sours in the Big Bar enclosure next to the stadium we went to Nelson Mandela Square which was rammed with travelling fans. The singing and drinking was relentless and the atmosphere was fantastic.

Luckily I had all day to recover yesterday before getting a late flight home via Amsterdam.

Another massive steak in Melrose did the trick though and I joined the hordes making the long trip home.

Eirian and Gavin on top of Cable Mountain

I left Eirian in the bar again because he's staying until Wednesday. I got a text from him whilst I was in Schipol airport saying he was just checking into the Sandton Sun Hotel and the Lions were all there checking out, so the lucky devil got the unopened bottle of duty free vodka I left behind by mistake - and he met the boys.

Going on the Lions tour was a fantastic trip and I've got four years to grovel before Australia.

Some areas of South Africa have a bad reputation and although there were isolated stories of crime against the fans, on the whole everyone was fine and the South African public looked after us all really well.

It was definitely a good idea to spend some time in Cape Town and going independently saved us loads of money.

Eirian did a great job of keeping me mostly on the straight and narrow, which is very unusual and when I got home, after the obligatory Toblerone kept her quiet for a bit, Vicky was soon on about the impending wedding plans. I've got my stag do to worry about before that though.

Well done the Lions.

Gavin's travelling companion Eirian will be posting his final instalment on our Welsh language website:

bbc.co.uk/chwaraeon