The Backstory
Since I moved up to the East Midlands I’ve been contemplating whether to reignite my love of watching live football. While I was in Milton Keynes there weren’t really any decent teams nearby. And anyway, the family weren’t interested and it’s a bit of a trek to watch my favourite team. But not so now! I was able to get a ticket for the FA Cup third round match between Luton and my boyhood heros Nottingham Forest. So my day was spent rediscovering a long-lost love. Come on you Reds!
A Few of My Favourite Things
But before any of that I had an appointment with a couple of my other favourite things. Saturday is parkrun day, plus there’s always time for a bit of geocaching.
So in best Julie Andrews style, a slightly reworked version of a famous song, by way of summarising my day:
parkrun at Conkers where everyone’s dashing,
Down by the Trent for a wee bit of caching,
Watching the Forest, where everyone sings,
These are a few of my favourite things.
Starting with a Run
So my first activity of the day was a trip to parkrun. At Conkers of course, because that’s my new home. You can see from the picture here that the weather was, errrr, a bit fresh. Positively brrrrrrr, in fact. It’s been like that all week, but I’ve not had much cause to go out in it. At least, I’ve not been out in it whilst wearing lightweight clothing.
The minimum temperature my car showed on the way over to the start was -8oC but that was while I was moving, so I couldn’t get a photo of that. But I’ll settle for the -7oC it was showing when I parked. It’s also been foggy, but quite localised.
The run this morning was busy by Conkers standards. 675 people finished, and for the first time ever I had to queue to get through the finish because the funnel wasn’t moving through fast enough. However, it was a beautiful morning for running. The course wasn’t foggy at all. The course was bathed in bright sunshine all the way round, making for an excellent run. I was quite quick too, by recent standards.
Breakfast
I didn’t stop for breakfast at Conkers because I had somewhere to be, and it was really busy. So instead I dashed home and had some breakfast there. followed by a clean up.
After that, I began the complicated process of trying to decide how many layers of clothing I would need. The weather forecast was that it would stay very cold all day. I settled for outdoor trousers with running tights beneath, double socks, double gloves, hat, and two long-sleeved layers beneath the biggest coat I have.
And so off to Nottingham for the rest of the day.
Pre-Match Geocaching
I parked up on the Victoria Embankment. On a regular day it has “regular” paid parking, but on matchdays they close the street and charge a very reasonable £5 to park. I was early enough to get within a quarter of a mile from The City Ground. I was happy with that.
And so to a bit of geocaching. First up was a potential Moby Dick. There’s a footbridge over the Trent, upon which are fastened thousands of padlocks. You know, the proverbial “love tokens” that people sometimes place. This could have taken me absolutely ages, so I was very happy to find it in a couple of minutes.
Next up was a simple trad that was easy once I was at the right coordinates. The key to this one is that you have to be at the right coordinates in all three dimensions. That involved walking along the top of a thankfully wide and un-slippery wall.
After this, I moved along to the “proper” Trent Bridge for another. It was a simple trad stuck to a bench.
My final physical cache was a puzzle that I’d solved earlier in the week. I had a near disaster here. The cache was a black bison tube. As I picked it up I fumbled it. Too many gloves. So I dropped it into a mass of leaves and long grass. That could have been a nightmare, especially with the football crowd starting to grow. But thankfully after a minute I spotted it. It was right by my own feet.
From here I wandered around the stadium following a couple of series of Ad Labs. One is dedicated to sporting venues in Nottingham, and I did those for Trent Bridge and The City Ground. The other was dedicated just to Forest.
And so to the football
I haven’t been into this stadium for a very long time. Last time I went, Forest got stuffed by Blackburn, by a team containing the one-and-only Alan Shearer. So that dates it a bit.
My seat was in a “safe standing” area. Basically, each row of seats has a big metal bar behind it. That means the row behind can stand up without fear of any argy-bargy. I actually quite liked that, because everybody stood up the whole time. That felt like proper football to me.
The game was decent. Forest won 2-0 at a canter. It should have been more. But I’ll take a 2-0 win. Hopefully they’ll be drawn at home in the fourth round and I’ll get a ticket for that too.
Getting home was fantastically quick. I walked along the side of the Trent and was back in my car by 5:10, and back home before 6pm. Nice!
P.S. One of the photos here looks like the stadium in the background was done with AI. But I can assure you that it’s natural. Some kind of weird play of the light.
