NOTTINGHAM SETS THE BAR HIGH

When I first had the idea to travel around the UK without using guidebooks I wasn’t sure if it would work. Would the advice and generosity of visitors to this web site really be enough to get me around the country?

So when my team, Forest, inexplicably got themselves into a position where maybe, just maybe, they might be able to secure promotion on the last day of the season, I decided to trial the idea with a quick visit to Nottingham.

Well, I’ll be damned if I did just have one of the best weekends of my life.

The highlights include:

- a pub crawl through the finest real ale establishments that ended with me on a sofa surrounded by pizza scraps and the DVD menu of Kung Fu Hustle on a continuous loop.

- Forest going up, in front of a sell-out crowd, after a pulsating game and fortuitous results from other grounds, followed by the biggest pitch invasion I’ve ever seen.

- a theatre performance based on Richard Benson’s book The Farm in a tiny Leicestershire village

- more real ale, this time listening to a skiffle band called Kick ‘n’ Rush who interspersed their ditties with really bad working men’s club jokes

- a night sleeping in Toton’s premier Tiki Lounge, followed by a morning listening to rare Northern Soul 45’s

If the trip continues in this vein it’s going to be one of my best ever - and the death of me!

Yep, Nottingham has set the bar high. (Big, big thanks to Al, Martin, Kath, Tim and Nick.)

Now it’s up to the rest of the country to step up to meet the challenge.

Essex and East Anglia are next.

After I lay down for a bit.

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