It's Murder, On The Orient Express ....

[Ally]

Marrowgate.

Great read Ossie - I'm always amused at the different food prices and the fayre on offer.

[Kaz]

[TheOstrich]

29/09 – I was going to start today’s piece with a few humorous remarks about marrows, but in the event, my latest footie foray turned out to be the Road Trip From Hell, so I’ll concentrate on that!

This was the last Saturday before the announced SWT / RMT rail strikes resume, so I took the opportunity for another long distance trip in the direction of London, and boy was that a mistake. I had in mind a visit to Barnes Rugby Club, which on the face of it, looked straight forward enough, changing at Clapham Junction onto a local train to Barnes station, which is more or less in the middle of nowhere, sort of near Roehampton, but with a convenient bus service up to Barnes itself. Barnes lies in a loop of the River Thames with Chiswick to the west and Fulham to the east (good view across the river of Craven Cottage, Fulham PC's stadium), and is therefore a tad isolated as there’s only the Hammersmith Bridge across the river on that stretch, but coming up from the south, no problem.

Someone on the sports forum I frequent had posted about a trip he’d made to this rugby club back in 2015, and he had referred to an “enclosed ground”. That got me scratching my head as I knew Barnes RFC played at the extensive Barn Elms Sports Centre / Playing Fields, but Google Maps’ aerial view of the complex doesn’t show any enclosed rugby pitches, so where exactly was it? Thanks to Bing Maps, however, I eventually tracked the likely location down to a tree-lined area up against the banks of the River Thames, at the far end of the sports hub. In contrast, Google, which is usually more reliable, clearly shows this area as two mini soccer pitches , so I thought I’d better get there early to avoid any last minute confusion.

So I duly set out today unseasonably early on the 09:51, and the fun started an hour and a half into the journey. An announcement was made as we approached Woking that my Exeter – Waterloo train would be terminated there, no reason given, sorry for any delays to your journey, have a nice day. Everyone duly piled out on Platform 2 and crossed over to Platform 1, boarding the first available semi-fast service out of there towards London, which was totally rammed. A 12 coach train, I was at the front, and at least 50 folk were standing in the carriage I was in. We proceeded at a leisurely pace, which then descended to a slow crawl followed by complete standstill for 10 minutes outside Raynes Park. The reason for the disruption was now known to be major signalling problems at Vauxhall, so, along with a contingent of Arsenal fans, I took the decision to bail out at Wimbledon once we arrived there. The guard had already appealed over the tannoy for “medical assistance” for a passenger in coach 5 (not that anyone could move in the train), and alighting at Wimbledon, I saw that a teenager was lying on the platform in the recovery position, having been violently sick.

I blagged my way through the gates and out of the station, knowing from earlier research that there was a bus that ran from Wimbledon to Richmond via Roehampton, where I knew I could connect into the 33/72 bus services to Barnes itself. The 493 when it arrived at Stop R on Wimbledon Hill was rammed, but I managed to get on it, and a young man offered this elderly Ostrich his seat – first time that’s ever happened to me! The first 72 bus at Roehampton was totally rammed, to the extent the driver turfed me and several other standee passengers off it. The next 72 was also rammed, but I managed to get on it. So I duly arrived at Barnes Castelnau, as it is called, wandered down the main shopping drag, and found not a KFC in sight ; only various Thai Restaurants and something known as the Olympic Studios, which is actually a cinema, café, dining room, members’ club and recording studio to boot – a bit too refined for me, so I raided the local ethnic stores for a chicken tikka wrap and litre of milk. In the recording studios, it should be noted, the Rolling Stones recorded their first ever hit “Come On”, as did the Troggs with “Wild Thing”.

I then trundled across the road and down the extensive Queen Elizabeth Walk which borders the sports fields to the London Wetland Centre, a WWF reserve in the heart of the conurbation, where I eyeballed a few bedraggled moorhens, a mallard and a zillion damselflies.

Here is a picture of Ossie in the reserve:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4770271,-0.230549,3a,37.5y,83.12h,82.32t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ssnUrdJ_ShQHUEHDiCSTFTw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656



I then continued on to the ground. But could I find an entrance to it? No. Because that end of the playing fields turned out to be a mega building site, something apparently to do with the Tideway London Sewer project. But after wandering in circles for about 10 minutes, a couple hailed me and asked if I was here for the rugby. It turned out they were taking the admission in the car park, and then directing us pedestrians round the back of a load of containers to access the pitch. Which turned out to be more or less where I thought it was.

Well, the only pitch furniture consists of two side-by-side prefabricated stands, with a total of 48 bucket seats. The clubhouse, such as it was, is nowhere near the pitch, some way back along Queen Elizabeth Walk. Today they were hosting a pre-match meal for "Ladies Wot Do Lunch" but that had a slightly awkward aftermath as the ladies (a couple of dozen 20 or 30 somethings) rolled into the stand just before the start, and - shall we say - they were just a tad raucous. The lunch looked like it had been a pretty liquid one .....

The teams duly came out onto the pitch, we got underway - and then things REALLY got surreal. With the score 14-7 after 31m, a Guernsey RFC player, Charlie Currie, went down on the far side of the pitch following a sickening collision. It was a fractured / dislocated ankle; he couldn’t be moved, and a 20 minute delay ensued. At which point, they removed the corner flags, and we all thought “game abandoned”. But no! We all decamped – players, officials, trainers, corner flags, spectators, the lot - some ¼ mile southwards to the far side of the Barn Elms sports complex, found an unoccupied rugby pitch, evicted a flock of Canada geese – 66, I counted – set up shop, and resumed play!

At half-time, with the score 14-12, the word came through that the main pitch had now been cleared - so we all upped corner flags and marched back again! “Like the bloody retreat from Stalingrad,” I quipped, to general, if hollow, laughter. The second half gets underway – and a Guernsey player goes down prone with an audible thump. “Good grief! Well, I’m not walking all the way back over there again, ” muttered someone in the stand next to me.

The game eventually concluded at around 16:30. So time to walk back to the bus stop, get the 33 (rammed) to Barnes Station, then the (rammed) train to Clapham Junction. The major signalling disruptions hadn’t been sorted, so I spent a frantic five minutes oscillation between platforms 9 and 11 trying to identify the first train out of there back to Woking (in the event, the Alton train was cancelled, and I finished up on the half empty but 25m late Portsmouth Harbour service). If I had thought arrival at Woking was going to be the end of the travel nightmares, having eventually (after organised chaos and a last minute platform alteration), boarded an Exeter-bound train, I was more than mistaken – that train promptly broke down at Basingstoke (a further 10 minute delay whilst they isolated the failed motors in the last 3 coaches), and we then sat in the passing loop at Tisbury for 15 minutes waiting for an up train to clear the single line! Home just over one hour late.

Please excuse me, I’m now off to put my head in an ice bucket ….

National League 2 South (Level 4): Barnes RFC 21 Guernsey Raiders RFC 26
Admission: £8 including excellent 40pp programme
Refreshments: The chicken tikka wrap (£2.49). I carried it lovingly all the way to the game, opened up the packaging, put it on the bucket seat beside me - and the bucket seat promptly tipped up and deposited the wrap on the floor! So that was the end of that!!
Attendance: 154

[Ally]

Bloody hell Ossie! What a journey!

You deserve a medal for perseverance and your description of actually getting there had me feeling I made the journey with you.

I'm ever so sorry but I burst out laughing at the tikka wrap disaster!

Fab read.

[Kaz]

You're a better Ostrich than I, Gunga Din!

[TheOstrich]

06/10 – A far less frenetic and much more local outing today, thanks to the resumption of the South Western Railway / RMT strikes, and the forecast bad weather. Well, monitoring the BBC Weather App locally, incessant rain was forecast for this Saturday all the way up to Thursday night, but on Friday, they changed their tune. Light rain and sunny intervals, they said. Well, that was “fake news” – they should have stuck to the original forecast of incessant rain, because that’s what we got!

I decided on a trip to Amesbury RFC; it’s about 30 miles each way, driving via the A303 and Stonehenge. I don’t quite know what all the fuss is about over Stonehenge, as those old stones always look titchy to me when I’m driving past them. But then, I’ve never seen them up close, as I believe in recent times you’ve needed to take out a small mortgage just to get into the Visitor Centre there (unless you’re a member of the National Trust or English Heritage, in which case it’s free) . I also understand you now have to book your visit in advance; it’s one of those “timed ticket” arrangements. There’s some evidence of the initial work towards the proposed new road-tunnel, as there’s a couple of small drilling rigs on the other side of the road from the monument – I assume these are for carrying out some sort of geological survey of the tunnel route. Unless, of course, they’re clandestinely fracking.

Traffic wasn’t at its best today on the A303 given the inclement weather, and I found that road surfaces were covered in water in places, so a necessarily cautious journey well below the speed limits. To get to the ground, it’s a case of meandering through Amesbury itself and out on the Salisbury road to the newish roundabout about a mile from the town centre. You then turn left and follow the military signs to Boscombe Down (Air Research Centre), and at the third roundabout along this spine road, by the Co-op Stores, turn into Archers Way which is a new housing development, still in the process of construction. The house occupied by Charlie Rowley and the late Dawn Sturgess, the Salisbury Novichok poisoning victim, is on this same estate, just off the second roundabout.

About ¼ mile or so down Archers Way, the grandiose-looking Centenary Pavilion comes into sight behind the builder’s cement storage tanks; the turn into the car park is tight and not immediately obvious (I drove past it and so did the car following me! ), but there’s ample parking spaces once you’ve found your way in there. The council-run clubhouse and changing rooms only date from 2015 and it’s a purely functional venue, but inside there is a small refreshment area (also strangely doubling as a physiotherapy treatment room today), and the building also sports a large veranda overlooking a full-size soccer pitch with the rugby pitch in the distance behind it. There’s also a cricket pitch to one side, so a little bit of a sports complex with new houses going up all around it. The rugby pitch is merely roped on one side, with one of the estate roads and partially-occupied new-builds on the other side – there’s no pitchside furniture or shelter of any kind, and as it was blowing an extremely chill hooley today, the Ostrich kept on the move, prowling up and down the touchlines, fevvers tightly packed for warmth.

After last week’s eventful game at Barnes, I had hoped for a less surreal affair today, but no, we got a match where the original visitors, Bradford on Avon II, had cried off, being unable to raise a team. However, Combe Down II, who play in the same league, had also had their game called off today for similar reasons, so they agreed at the last minute to step into the breach and play at Amesbury. So the opposition was not who I expected it to be, but it was still a league fixture, effectively brought forward from three weeks hence.

Combe Down then managed to forget to bring their kit so, after pulling some strings (presumably with nearly Larkhall Barracks), they duly took to the field in green shirts bearing the logo of the 32nd Regiment Royal Artillery Regiment! A casual visitor might have been somewhat bemused by these proceedings, but I’m no longer surprised by the goings-on at the lower depths of grass-roots rugby, and Amesbury themselves were quite happy with the turn of events, gaining an unlikely 10 league points today; 5 for the “Home Walk Over” due to Bradford not fulfilling the original fixture, and a further 5 for the subsequent rout of their Bath-based visitors. They're now way out in front at the top of the table.

Amesbury RFC were founded in 2017, played friendlies and junior cup fixtures last season, and entered the South West Rugby Pyramid on the bottom rung this September. They have started in fine style with two away wins, and today was actually their first home league fixture. Combe Down II were also unbeaten before today, but they had no answer to the home team’s drive and determination, coupled with fast running and the knack of finding the right channels to attack. Two tries scored in the first 8 minutes, bonus point secured by 18m and 48-0 up at the interval, Amesbury eased off in the second half, getting just a bit careless in their handling towards the end, otherwise we might have finished closer to the 80 or 90 point mark. Most of the home team’s 11 tries were run in from distance.

In keeping with the traditional grassroots club rugby ethos, I was amused by the following exchange on the sideline during the first half:
Amesbury coach to substitute player: “Right, get yourself warmed up. You’ll be replacing whichever of the two centres who’s managed to annoy me the most in the next five minutes!”
Passing club supporter: “That’ll be Kyle, then …..”

A very enjoyable visit today to a friendly and enthusiastic new club. And I see no reason why they shouldn’t secure a promotion this season. Uneventful drive home, with just the one overturned car and caravan encountered on the A303, thankfully on the opposite carriageway!

Wadworth 6X Wilts & Dorset League 3 North (Level 10): Amesbury RFC 69 Combe Down II RFC 0
Admission: free
Refreshments: nothing available apart from teas or coffees. They weren’t going to charge me, but I made a small contribution to club funds in lieu. It was only as I was leaving that I spotted the Evergreen Community Café just a short walk away …..
Attendance: 18

[Ally]

Great team talk from the Amesbury coach.

Can't believe you didn't spot that cafe Ossie....

Thanks for an entertaining read.

[cromwell]

If the Ealing Studios had written films about local rugby... Forgot their kit!

I am in awe of your stamina Os. I bet you are glad you didn't have another match like last weeks. Cancelled trains, chucked off buses, walking from one pitch to another, blimey O'Reilly.

It's a great read.
ps Yours truly played 7 a side schools rugby at Roehampton many years ago. The home of Rosslyn Park.

[TheOstrich]

ps Yours truly played 7 a side schools rugby at Roehampton many years ago. The home of Rosslyn Park.

Ha! Well yes, I went right past Rosslyn Park's Roehampton ground en-route from Wimbledon to Barnes, and it's actually only a couple of minutes walk from Barnes Station. It's been duly added to my hit-list .....

A Yorkshire lad in London playing rugby union? I'm surprised you haven't been drummed out of the county!

I also went past the Wimbledon Tennis campus on the 493 bus. Again, I'd never seen it before, and I wondered what the heck it was at first; I had no Idea the Centre and No 1 courts were so imposing, so massive ....

Yes, I was rather bemused to spot that café, Ally, it was sort of on the ground floor of a retirement folk's complex. I tracked it down on line, and I think it had only been open for a week. It appears to be run by a West Indian couple - I'd certainly try it out if I'm ever up that way again.

[miasmum]

In my day if we forgot our kit we had to play in our undies or raid the lost property box