England's Ashes Boot Camps: Tales of Broken Ribs, Mock Crime and Hangovers

With less than a fortnight to go until the first Ashes Test in Cardiff on 8 July - and Trevor Bayliss having only arrived in the country on Thursday to take over as head coach - England will briefly escape the pre-series hype and fly to Spain this weekend for a four-day training camp at an undisclosed location. Organised by Andrew Strauss, the new director of cricket, its intention is to help Bayliss to get comfortable working with Alastair Cook and his players, who will leave their cricket gear at home and instead use the time away to focus on fielding drills, fitness training and team meetings. A spot of golf is also on the to-do list.(The Players England Need to Watch Out for)

It will be the fourth time in recent years that England have taken time away ahead of an Ashes series. Here is a look at the previous incarnations of the boot camp - and the results that followed.

2013-14 Ashes, Staffordshire

The least spoken or written about of the pre-Ashes training camps came before the team's 5-0 implosion in Australia. To this date the details remain light and the players involved still baffled.(Anderson Urges Teams to Ditch Sledging)

Taking place in the Staffordshire countryside, the England squad found themselves immersed in a role-play scenario in which they were tasked with preventing a mock crime. After being given professional surveillance training, the players were split into three groups and set separate assignments to crack the case but did not camp, instead staying overnight in a local hotel.

The intention was that each team's results would feed into a the conclusion on the third day. But after two days in which players found themselves either sat in bushes twiddling the frequency dials on walkie-talkies or driving hire cars up and down the M6 on the trail of a mysterious four-wheel drive, only one team managed to complete their mission and the whole thing fell flat.(Hussey Expects Tough Ashes Series)

Andy Flower, the then team director, is understood to have apologised to the team afterwards but, with such little turnaround time between home and away Ashes series, the players walked away from the exercise grumbling about a confusing three days in which valuable time that could have been spent either training or resting was wasted. Kevin Pietersen, in the only player autobiography published since, wrote: "[It] was the biggest shambles, and gave us a hint about what our winter was going to be like - it was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life."

The only other public reference to the camp remains a tweet from the organiser, the former SAS soldier Floyd Woodrow, CEO of Chrysalis Worldwide - a "values-based performance optimisation organisation". He tweeted: "Outstanding three days with one of my favourite teams, they picked up complicated training quickly and executed the drills to perfection."(Ashes Set for Bumpy 'Sledging' Ride)

Motivational speakers tend to view things positively, of course.

Result: England lost the Ashes with a 5-0 series whitewash

2010-11 Ashes, Bavaria

The current team's trip to Spain this weekend was referred to as a holiday by the Australia spinner Nathan Lyon on Tuesday but, compared with England's pre-Ashes trip to the Bavarian forest, it will be. In October 2010 Strauss's side experienced a brutal four days on a trip organised by the England and Wales Cricket Board's security adviser, Reg Dickason, and run by members of the Australian police force, but later claimed to have forged a team ethic that paved the way for a first series win on Australian soil in 24 years.(Clarke Vows Australia Won't Cross the Line)

Flying the morning after a celebratory end of season Professional Cricketers' Association awards dinner in London, the squad and support staff were met at Munich airport by what the wicketkeeper Matt Prior described as "eight of the biggest blokes I have ever seen in my life" and proceeded to experience a military-style regime in the forest, in which the use of first names was banned and misdemeanours were met with hundreds of push-ups by way of punishment.

The toughest moment came in the shape of a four-hour uphill hike holding bricks in both hands, while the greatest number of headlines were generated following the team's return with the news that James Anderson had suffered a broken rib during a boxing match with Chris Tremlett. Graeme Swann, in his autobiography, The Breaks Are Off, described the venture as "easily the worst four days of my life".

But Strauss claimed the trip, on which his side were pushed to the limits both physically and mentally, had a beneficial effect on team spirit, breaking them down before building them up and proving instructive as to how certain players coped under pressure. The lucky ones were Cook, who missed the first three days because of a clash with his brother's wedding, and Jonathan Trott, who sat it out altogether as his wife was expecting their first child. They also finished as England's two leading run scorers in the series that followed.

Result: England retained the Ashes with a 3-1 series win

2009 Ashes, Flanders

Following the lead of Steve Waugh, who as Australia captain organised a visit to Anzac Cove at Gallipoli en route to the 2001 Ashes, England made a two-day trip the first world war battlefields of Flanders before the home series in 2009, following a turbulent six months in which Peter Moores lost his job as head coach for the first time and Pietersen saw his captaincy handed to Strauss.

Flower, whose caretaker head coach role in the post-Christmas tour of the Caribbean had been made permanent, stated the intention was to broaden the horizons of the players, who were there to commemorate servicemen who lost their lives in the 1914-18 war. A ceremony for fallen cricketers was held, with a stone cricket ball laid at the grave of the former England and Kent spinner Colin Blythe, one of the fallen at the battle of Passchendaele in 1917.

The trip was not without incident, however. Ravi Bopara, whose three successive Test centuries against West Indies that year would take him into the Ashes trip at No3, forgot his passport on the way to the airport, while Andrew Flintoffmissed the team bus for a trip to the trenches at Ypres after a late night drinking the local beer, Duvel - or "David" as it became known among the players, after the American golfer Duval.

The team had been given their evenings off but the all-rounder's transgression was deemed worthy of reprimand by the team management. Strauss later said: "He's very aware he's stuffed up. He's taken it on the chin and apologised sincerely." In his autobiography, Ashes to Ashes, the all-rounder added: "My big concern was that it might be interpreted as showing disrespect to First World War veterans, which I certainly never intended."

Despite that error of judgement, Swann later wrote that the trip as a whole brought cricket into perspective somewhat. "To witness these trenches was a shocking reminder how lucky we are, and how ridiculously scant life was for them. Here we were on the brink of the 2009 Ashes, a series being billed as do-or-die. What are five games of cricket compared to what those troops had to endure?"

Result: England regained the Ashes with a 2-1 series win