Costa Brava tour and Med. cruise for The Times word game winner

A Mondial Holidays tour of Costa Brava and a Mediterranean cruise awaits the winner of the next word game series which starts today.

This attractive prize will be complemented by a Lm50 voucher to spend at the Malta International Airport tax-free centre and a year's membership in the Scrabble Club.

The winner will have the chance to visit Barcelona, Universal Studios at Port Aventura, Lloret de Mar, Tossa de Mar, Girona, Tordera and the splendid Gran Palace Show.

The tour leaves Malta on June 4, arriving in Barcelona in the evening. Participants would be immediately transferred by private coach to a hotel in Lloret de Mar.

The following morning, the tour would be offered an optional excursion to the Catalan capital, Barcelona, which is famous for its main road the Ramblas, where artists of all genres meet and bring the city alive with their busking.

Another optional excursion is for Port Aventura, Europe's second largest and newest adventure theme park.

Here the group can stroll along the "great wall of China" and ride on the "dragon Khan". One can witness a "Maya ceremony", hear the bullets of America's far west or visit the deep galleries of a silver mine on board the El Diablo devil train.

On the following day, an optional excursion to Girona, one of the most beautifully restored cities in Europe, will be offered.

Another optional full-day excursion is to the spectacular monastery of Montserrat, amid the national park of the mountains surrounding the town, known as one of the most spectacular of all of Spain's natural sights. This would be followed by a tour of the Costa Brava region, visiting Tossa de Mar.

The tour will then move on to the small independent state of Andorra, in the heart of the Pyrenees mountains, driving through beautiful mountain scenery.

On the sixth day, the tour is taken to the port of Barcelona from where participants embark on the cruise liner SS Oceanic, a 39,000-tonne ship with a capacity for 1,300 passengers.

The cruise arrives at Grand Harbour on June 11.

The winner of the series which ended last Saturday will receive a free place, courtesy of Albertours, on its tour to the Austrian Tyrol, Switzerland and Germany between April 26 and May 3.

He will also be given a free year's subscription in the Scrabble Club, and a Lm50 voucher from the Tax Free Marketing Group to be spent at Malta International Airport's tax free shops.

The six nine-letter words were annotator, saccharin, portfolio, fetishism, recession and geologist.