Cricket, My Brother and Me by Geoffrey Hart

Author:Geoffrey Hart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

The Moon Under Water

I MENTIONED earlier that over the years Roy and I have tried out just about every campsite within range of Trent Bridge. This is also true of the many trips we have made to both Headingley and Old Trafford. I am not certain how we arrived at the decision to always stay at campsites, but it seems to have become our preferred option.

In particular, I am not a great lover of bed and breakfast. I live halfway up a Welsh mountain with a German wife who hates small talk and a bunch of horses so I’m not at my most chatty in the morning. When I am away at the cricket all I want to do is to sit and talk to Roy about the prospects for the day’s play. If the tables are well spaced out and a self-service buffet breakfast is provided I am fine. If however I am forced to chat to other guests then I can get quite desperate.

Staying in a pub can often be suitably anonymous, but an overnighter in a pub presents Roy with a different set of problems altogether. Roy ran public houses for the best part of 20 years, often providing accommodation and meals and he ran a tight ship. To sit in the middle of a chaotic bar, still not cleared up from the night before, trying to enjoy his breakfast is the stuff of nightmares for him. I am relieved to report that this antipathy towards pubs does not extend to drinking in them.

I guess we decided to give campsites a try when Roy first bought himself a vintage 1970 VW camper van and although the sleeping arrangements were a bit tight for two big blokes we enjoyed the experience in every other way. Roy still owns the camper van, now with a huge awning, as well as a trailer tent and I have a small caravan. We tend to rotate between these different options.

I said earlier that the campsite near Trent Bridge that best meets our needs is Thornton’s Holt in the hamlet of Stragglethorpe, but before settling on that we had a number of interesting experiences.

Our first camping trip to watch England at Trent Bridge was in 1998. England had found South Africa to be tough opponents since their readmission to Test cricket. England had drawn the home series in 1994 and then lost in South Africa two years later. We were due to watch the fourth Test with England already 1-0 down with only two Tests to play. They had to win this game to stay in the series. Incidentally, it was in this match that Andrew Flintoff made his Test debut aged only 20.

We had tickets for Saturday and Sunday and had booked a pitch in a campsite near Nottingham located in the grounds of a hotel. We arrived on Friday afternoon and spent a quiet evening in the hotel bar before turning in early. However, before going to bed I had

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.