Didn't I Tell You ?

Well I said I had a feeling that the Nailers would beat Ilkeston and thats exactly what happened Having said that we could have been 4-2 down at half-time so a 3-1 win didn't tell the full story but as they say the record books will show that we won 3-1 and we also got the three points to prove it.

To add to that I won £25 on the Goalden Goal, ironically for the Ilkeston goal that was scored by Gary Ricketts in the 21st minute - all in all quite a good afternoon - well if you ignore the Autumnal weather in August that is.

Favourite photo from the day - Lee Morris celebrates his second goal of the day. The despair of the Ilson defenders combined with the joy of Lee & the Belper Town fan makes for  a good composition. Other photos from the game are here: Belper 3 Ilkeston FC 1

Back on the bike today - just a quick 4.5 mile whizz round after tea. Got my eye on a Carrera Winter jacket on EBay - might treat myself for my birthday tomorrow - assuming I can win the auction of course as there is no buy it now price. Also I need to start thinking about getting some lights for the bike as the nights are already drawing in. 

I'm looking at buying a new bike next Spring - got my eye on a bike from Decathlon - a Triban 3 currently £299. Have a look here Triban 3 shame it only comes in red, of course I would have preferred a yellow and black one - up the Nailers !

Windy Whitby

We woke to a blue sky an so it was off to Whitby as planned. The rain was replaced with a strong wind but that was a happy trade off after the past two days of downpours.

Arrived at the car park near the Marina at about 10:30 and there was already only a few parking spaces – and the longest queue you’ve ever seen for the two pay machines. If we had left it another 15 minutes or so before we left Marton we’d have been driving round looking for a parking space.

Whitby Abbey with circling birds

First stop was Marie Antoinettes for a latte and a piece of lemon cake to set us up for the bracing walk onto the pier and then up to the Abbey. This is by far the busiest we have ever seen Whitby. In all of our previous visits it’s never been a weekend and definitely never a Bank Holiday weekend. By the afternoon the narrow streets were so crowded that you were queuing to walk down the road – that was something new to experience.

After a good walk around the shops, up to the Whale bones and halfway along the 2^nd pier – it was almost too windy to stand up the further you got out – we headed for Hadleys Fish restaurant for a bite to eat before heading back to the cottage.

After watching the highlights of one of the better Grand Prix races (The Belgium) we watched the Cycling and then headed off home to beat the Bank Holiday Monday chaos that I am sue will ensue on the roads. A home game with Ilkeston tomorrow should finish the bank Holiday off nicely although I doubt the ‘on field action’ will be nice as it's a local derby with pride as well as points at stake. I fancy Belper to turn it on today - time will tell. 


Other snaps from the weekend can be seen here: Yorkshire Weekend

A Day of Two Halves

Woke up to find it had stopped raining at last. Had breakfast and decided to have a ride to York as the forecast was for heavy showers and we figured there are a lot of shops to hide in if it did come on to rain hard and lots to do outside if it didn’t.

We also decided to go via the Park-and-Ride as last time we went to York the traffic was horrendous (and that wasn’t a Saturday or a Bank Holiday). It turned out to be quite easy to find and was relatively cheap at £2.30 each return. Hard to imagine finding parking in York for less than £4.60 for the 4.5 hours we were there.

The morning was dry and in parts quite sunny and warm although there was always a threatening cloud not too far away. We had a walk to the record shop that was just outside the city walls - last time we came it was a Sunday and it was closed. Today it was open but to be honest the prices they want for second hand Cd's is just too much. When you consider that it's probably about £3-4 for  CD from Amazon (including postage & Packing), paying £6.50 isn't on. I appreciate the overheads and the 'supporting local business' but I figured that in this case the 'local business just wasn't local enough for me and besides there wasn't really anything I wanted enough. I did hear another guy in the shop ask if they had any 'Jethro Tull on vinyl" to which I was tempted to say I had a box full in the loft but decided not to get into that conversation as he would probably want to cherry-pick the collection as I would in the same situation.

Had another Italian lunch in a lovely place in Low Petersgate but when we went out, with the intention of walking around the City walls it had come on to heavy rain so we headed back to the cottage.

The guy who sits on a bicycle covered in purple paint is still plying his trade in the town centre. He sits motionless on the bike and looks like a statue. He gets money by posing with people for photographs. Must be good money as he was there when we went last year.

The rain on the way back was torrential again, there has to be local flooding about with the amount we’ve seen in the past two days.

Rang Andy to find out how Belper were getting on, another defeat ! This time at the hands of Romulus (who had previously not won in their first 4 attempts). A 1-2 defeat leaves us with a record of P 5 W 1 D 2 L 2. Early days but definitely not the start we had wanted – or hoped for.

A bad day all round for local football as Derby lost their 100% record with a 1-2 home defeat to Burnley, Alfreton lost 1-4 at home to Wrexham and Burton lost at Altrincham.

Tomorrow the weather looks like being slightly better so we’re off to Whitby.

A Wet Start

Day one of our three day Bank Holiday trip to Marton in Yorkshire began under grey skies and more or less carried on in the same vein – well it actually got worse s the day went on. As we couldn’t get into the cottage before 2pm we decided to head straight to Scarborough, leaving Belper at about 10 minutes past 8 we made good progress (apart from one delay behind a tractor loaded incredibly high with straw bales) and arrived at 10:30 in the heaviest rain that we’ve seen in a very long time. On the way in we passed the former football ground of Scarborough Athletic which is in a sorry state. We both recalled visiting the ground a few years back for a league match – now they are back in the Northern Counties League (1 below Belper) and ground sharing at Bridlington Town.

On arrival at the town centre the rain was bouncing off the car park tarmac as we sat and considered how to get the umbrellas out of the boot and dash to the shopping centre without one or other of us actually drowning !

As we were both feeling peckish we headed straight to Costa for a Latte and a Muffin. As we drank we watched the umbrellas and rain coats passing down the main shopping street in Scarborough – we’ve lost count of the times we’ve sat in that Costa but never with the rain lashing down outside.

By the time we got outside again it had almost stopped so we decided to move the car down to the Spa car park and walk along the sea front. Due to the amount of rain the pay meter was out of action so we ended up with about three hours of free parking – which was nice. We managed to get a walk to the pier and back as far as the Italian restaurant ASK before the rain returned with a vengeance. It was so bad we had to buy a cheap umbrella to get back to the car without ending up soaked (Sally had decided she didn’t want to carry our umbrella round so left it in the boot). We set the sat nav for Marton and headed out of Scarborough – about three miles from Marton we turned off the main road onto a country lane which was doing a very good impression of a swimming pool. 

We aquaplaned our way down towards the lovely little village of Marton (1 of about 20 places of that name – including two in Yorkshire). The village appears to be split in two by a river, the section we are in has about 20 houses dating back to the 18^th century. Our cottage is called Brookfield and is beautiful little one bedroomed place.

As I type this at approximately 8:20pm it is still raining with a forecast for more showers tomorrow. We’ll probably take a ride over to Whitby tomorrow.

The Nailers are at Romulus so hopefully I’ll be able to get updates from someone at the match. No WiFi available here so no chance of getting information from the net.

Just a quick snap

I was sat in the lounge watching TV when I caught the sky out of the corner of my eye. Ran up stairs, grabbed the camera and snapped this shot of the sky above the neighbours digital aerial.

Lovely day

Scary Tree

A lovely Sunday yesterday - very hot so we decided to take a drive to Darley Park. To be perfectly honest there isn't too much there other than lots and lots of grass (not really surprising for a park I guess but you probably know what I mean). Started with an ice cream then a 5km walk around the cricket pitch, down by the river, round by the football pitches and back through Darley Abbey. I saw an interesting sign on the side of a house in Darley Abbey, stating that 'Stone throwing will be severely dealt with" makes you wonder what they did to those people who were caught in the act. Here are a couple more snaps I took on the walk, a scary looking tree (which has been Photoshopped) and a view of the Mills at Darley Abbey taken from Darley Abbey itself (also photoshopped somewhat). 

Darley Abbey Mills

Back on the bike today - and back to the original 7.5 mile circuit.  I wasn't really in the mood for it before setting off but eventually got into a rhythm and completed the circuit in 31.37 (which included a couple of delays behind cars which amounted to approx 30 seconds so it would have been down around the 31 minute mark without these). No long ride this week as we're off to Yorkshire for a few nights so might have to do a few extra miles on Wednesday night.

Tomorrow night the Nailers are at Lincoln United but have decided against the trip as it would involve a rush home from work, out again at 5:45, home at about 11pm and then up again at 5:50am for work. Maybe i'm just getting too old for this game !

A First Win

A huge sigh of relief went up at the Meadow at the sound of the final whistle yesterday as Belper recorded their first win of the season. Leaders Rainworth were in town but to be honest their two opening wins looked more like fortunate results than a team that is genuinely going to be challenging for promotion come April. Having said that we'd rather have been in their position than the 18th place we held at kick off. A cracking strike from 'veteran' Andy Rushbury (a 2nd half sub playing his 296th game for Belper Town) was the difference between the teams and that didn't arrive until the 86th minute. Photos can be seen here:

Belper v Rainworth

Joe Carter was in the Rainworth line up and had a superb game, keeping Ruben Wiggins-Thomas and Lee Morris quiet, although a foul on Lee went unpunished in the second half that really should have been a penalty. We think the ref chickened out of the penalty as he would have had to send Carts off as last man and that would have been very harsh.

Team Photo 2011/12

Jon Froggatt

Before the game the annual team photos were taken (see yesterdays post for more details). The players behaved themselves for a change and it all went off well. First I did the individual headshots for the programme and the papers and then I did the team picture.  Reviewing the photos afterwards I think there was just one player missing from today, Alan O'Hare, I'll have to catch up with him at a game in the future although he has missed his chance to be on the team photo for this season.

Also I took along my netbook as Tommy Taylor had asked for music to be played as the players came out and after each goal. As it turned out Nigel was doing the team line ups as they came out so no music there and no-one to play the music when the goal went in so all in all not a good day. Also there were endless moans from the fans about the music being too loud but what they didn't know was that Tommy T had asked for it to be loud as he thinks the ground is like a morgue ! I think I'll leave it at home next time. Having said that the next two games are away, Lincoln United on Tuesday night and Romulus on Saturday - will be missing that one as we're away for a few days over the bank holiday. Back in time for the game on Monday against local rivals Ilkeston though. Back to work and cycling between now and then all being well.