Authored By Max
Bury 3-0 Barnet. Oh dear. This was up there with the most horrendous of Barnet performances I've witnessed, we were just simply awful. However, good story to go with this one...
Being a student and skint, it's not easy to get too many games. However, I wanted to go to this. I'd not been to Bury before and was missing my 'football fix' it had been three weeks. We were unbeaten in ten too. I told this to my uni mate the Monday before the game, who I'd only known for five weeks at the time. His response to my prediciment? "Lets hitchike it then" ... "..alright then!"
Quite simply, so we did.
A 7:15am start, an hour later than planned, but we were both up, showered and armed with a rucksack each containing something like 15 packs of Asda crisps, some water, 4 cans of Foster's, a hoodie and a spare pair of socks, just in case. We left ours in Nottingham at 7:30 and began our journey with a lovely four mile walk, to near the M1 turn off. We got the directions of google maps and set off. It was not a short walk. By just before 9am we were pitched up roadside with our 'MANCHESTER (or Bury)' sign out. At this point we were laughing as much as anything else, taking photos and stuff. I'm not sure either of us could believe we were doing it really. However, we'd not been waiting long at all before our first lift, but it was a bit disappointing, sort of.
Decent bloke, pulled up in a flash car and told us we were in a rubbish spot, but he'd drop us to a layby about 100 yards from the M1, about five minutes up the road. Touch. So we got in and got the short lift to there. Here we tried again and after only quarter of an hour or so - success! A middle aged bloke and his little kid, in an old Mercedes people carrier, tables in the back and everything. They were going North, but not Manchester. Still, beggars can't be choosers and a smooth, quick journey to Junction 34, Sheffield, was had. They were a bit strange, but after briefly talking to us about what uni courses we were doing and what not, they pretty much kept themselves to themselves and we just sat in the back chatting. My mate I was with hails from Rotherham and is a big Sheffield Wednesday fan, turned out he knew the area we were dropped in, but this didn't make matters any easier for getting to the motorway. It was also a seriously dodgy part of Sheffield, loads of graffiti covered underpasses with special ultra violet lighting so people couldn't shoot up in there. Lovely.
Hmm, next came a bit of a dicey bit, lucky really. Walking up by those huge cooling towers that you always drive past on the way North past Sheffield (which have since been demolished). And before we knew it, strolling up the hard shoulder of the M1. Must have done a good two mile stroll from the urban bit we were dropped in, until a little way up the M1..before the Police pulled up! Oh shit. Looked like a trip to the nick was on the cards as the blue lights showed up in front of us. Breaking the law and that...Nope! Sound copper, luckily, told us off a bit...then gave us a lift to Junction 35A, not on a motorway road, with a good layby to hike from! The journey in the car was quite funny. There was loads of police gear on the back seats, so any space for one of us there and one in the front. It was me who got in the front passenger seat. It was so difficult not to absolutely piss myself laughing everytime I caught my friend's eye in the mirror. I couldn't believe we were getting a lift off the police to a good spot to hitchike from. How many other times would we have got nicked in that same situation? South Yorkshire police went right up in my estimation, excellent stuff.
It was about half 10 or 11 by now, I think. This was the worst part, we had a fair old wait here and for the first time, fears of not making it. Stood near a signpost that said 'Manchester 35' but it was just about getting a lift. Not quite the middle of nowhere, there was a little hotel and a McDonalds just across the road and a steady flow of traffic, but no one was stopping. Got a fair few toots of encouragement, but these weren't really helping us get to Greater Manchester. Eventually a bloke I'd guess in his 50's, with a strong Sheffield accent, picked us up. He was on the way to Manchester Airport to pick up his daughter. Quite a friendly bloke, another nice car, we were doing this in style. Easy journey with him across the Penines. We were going to make it! We got to the M60 on the edge of Manchester, in Denton. He had to go South to the airport, we had to go North. He dropped us just on the turn off of the M60. Again, on a hard shoulder. We quickly said thanks to him and he said he'd look out for our score. Bet he laughed when he saw it. Anyway, we didn't want to hang around by the side of a motorway again for too long, so we ran up the side of a bridge by the turn-off for the M60 and climbed over the wall onto the pathway across the motorway.
We stood on the bridge for a bit and cracked open a celebratory can of Foster's, just watching the traffic and feeling quite smug. We'd done good. This was about half 12. We were in Manchester, therefore, we thought we had all the time in the world. We would have done to be fair, if we'd known that Denton to Manchester Piccadilly station was 7 miles away, we'd have bussed it. But no. We didn't think enough really, we thought once we were in Manchester we were basically there. So, we walked. It took a fair while and knackered us both. The rucksacks didn't make it any easier. Amazingly, we got to Piccadilly by about 2:10pm, to get a tram to Bury. Having seemingly had bags of time, we were now a bit pushed. The last half a mile or so to the station was more or less a slow jog rather than a walk and we worked up a right sweat. Anyway, here we were, the tramstop. I'd got the details off the internet, but it seemed pretty simple. Bury was the end of the line. We just had to hope it didn't take too long to get there. This was the fhe first money we were going to spend, having left at half 7, not a bad effort!
Tram to Bury was easy enough as it turned out and we bumped into another lad I know from Barnet and then with him as well, we ended up getting a taxi to the ground from Bury station as we were starting to be pushed for time. £2.80 three ways wasn't too bad, took the total cost of the day so far to just under £6.
2:57pm - We strolled into Gigg Lane. Me and my mate couldn't quite believe we'd pulled it off. I was just absolutely stunned and well pleased with what we'd managed to do. I walked in, holding my 'MANCHESTER (OR BURY)' sign proudly aloft, much to the amusement of our away support, especially my mate who was already there. My other friend walked in a few minutes later, pissed and could not believe we were there. He pissed himself, then gave me a big cuddle and we had a decent laugh. Well, aside from the football. The said friend who walked in hammered carried on drinking a can in the ground and was lucky not to be ejected when the stewards saw him. After this he went on a really harsh, unneccesary, but piss funny tirade at the Bury 'keeper. That was the highlight of the game, really. The game was crap. Really crap. So I'm not going to talk about that.
Full time, slight worry. How do we get home? No one it seemed was driving, as if they were, I was hoping to get back to Birmingham or somewhere, then either stop at my mates uni flat there, or get a cheap train back to Notts. I had sort of banked on someone I knew driving back and offering us a lift, no such luck. We said bye to the other boys and then hung around outside a now very dark Gigg Lane, weighing up our options. For a bit we even considered asking Paul Fairclough if they'd let us on the team coach! But decided against it. We might have asked him had he not got on it so quick when he came out of the players bit.
It wasn't a realistic option to hitchike now, it was pitch black. So in the end, after a bit of hanging about, thinking, we walked up to the Bury tram stop and made our way back to Manchester Piccadilly. When we boarded and for most of the journey, I thought I'd lost my tram ticket, I later found it, but that was a bit of a worry too. Oh and the zip on my coat broke and it was bloody freezing. All of a sudden this wasn't so fun. Amusing moment when my mate fell asleep on the tram and dribbled all down himself in front of a fit bird, but that aside, things weren't looking too great. We decided that our cheap day would have to get a little more expensive. We had no options now but to get a train home. I have a mate whose studying in Manchester, but he just so happened to be back in London that weekend. Typical.
At Manchester station, we saw we'd narrowly just missed a train to Nottingham, but there was another at about twenty to eight. Found out it was actually pretty cheap, something like an £11 single with a student railcard, taking the cost of the whole day to just under £30, pretty good still. We had no other options and I grudgingly bought my ticket home, despite it being cheap. As it turned out, this put me over my limit with the bank, so it was a little gutting. We then sat on the floor at the station, eating soggy sandwiches we made the night before, both feeling a bit crap now, but with the knowledge that hopefully in hindsight, this would all seem fairly amusing. It does to be fair.
We got back to Nottingham about 10pm. The train journey was pretty uneventful, we were both exhausted. On the train we'd been on about just both going straight to sleep. We'd had about four hours sleep the previous night and must have walked at least 12 miles in the day (we counted it up later, cos we're that cool). However, one of our flat mates rang us and said they were going to get messy in someone's room, also sticking with the cheap vibe. So we did that too. Within about an hour of being home I was hanging out the living room window trying not to be sick, before passing out in my room, making the mistake of leaving the door unlocked. That was fun..bastards.
Sunday morning didn't feel too amazing, largely just thinking 'why!?' and hanging out of my arse, but to be honest, it's a good story isn't it? Just a shame we lost 3-0. An experience to say the least, never fails to raise a smile thinking about this one..
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