Gosh, it's been ages
hasn't it? How the Dickens are you all? Sorry to have fallen silent for so long,
I'm afraid I rather fell foul of the pressures of the dreaded day job -
something that makes me that little bit more keen to get back in the 'van and
get away again. Not long now, I'm pleased to say, before we point the Snail
northwards and head back to the Northern Highlands, but for now I'll have to
console myself with memories of our Easter expedition.
We'd spent a few nights pitched up at Ravenglass on the
North West Coast of England, and it was time to move on to pastures new - on
the North East Coast of England at the Caravan Club Site in Berwick-upon-Tweed.
First of course, we had to travel north.
I'm always surprised by how far north the eastern part of England actually goes. In spite of the fact that they're both pretty near the England/Scotland border, Berwick-upon-Tweed is a long way north of Ravenglass, and so to get there we had to drive through the southern marches of Scotland. As regular readers may remember, we love Scotland more than any other place on Earth (except maybe Yorkshire...) so this was no real hardship.
The borders is a place we tend to pass through as we head for the Highlands, so although the area is undoubtedly beautiful we don't actually know it all that well. As we headed north and east we passed near the neat little town of Newcastleton, then past Jedburgh, which is home to a pretty impressive ruined abbey and the strangest ball game I've ever come across.
Mrs Snail and I visited this border town a couple of years ago, and very much enjoyed mooching around the Abbey - founded in the early twelfth century and often on the receiving end of raids from both sides of the oft shifting border. It was February mind you and absolutely freezing, so we soon retired to the nearby tourist information centre to buy a guidebook, warm up and ask if the nice young lady behind the counter could suggest anywhere for lunch.
The nice young lady gave us several recommendations - I
cannot for the life of me remember where we ate, it was a couple of years ago after all - and also warned us
"you'll notice all the shops and things are boarded up. Don't worry,
they're open, it's just that it's the Handball today..." When we enquired
what "The Handball" was she was a little unclear on the details.
Somewhat bemused we set off to get lunch, and then made our way to the centre
of town to see what on earth she had been talking about.
By some fortune we arrived at what appeared to be an opportune moment. All of the businesses on the high street were indeed boarded over, with little knots of people crowding in doorways looking towards the open area at the top of the street where a crowd was gathered around a stone cross - which I assumed to be the old market cross. There didn't seem to be any way of differentiating people into teams - I discovered later that the locals are divided into "Uppies" and "Downies", but I'm still non the wiser as to how you tell the two apart, presumably Jedburgh is a small enough town that people just know - and to be honest the whole thing seemed a little chaotic.
Then one of those serious looking little grey haired men who always pop up at events like this
climbed up onto the base of the cross with what looked like a small, black
leather rugby ball - about the size of a cricket ball, perhaps a little larger,
with coloured ribbons streaming from one of its pointed ends. He launched this
into the crowd, and what can only be described as the most insane sporting
event I have ever witnessed began.
In many ways, not a lot happened. Some guy caught the ball
and about thirty other guys immediately jumped on him, pinning him under a pile
of punching, kicking bodies, all presumably trying to prise the ball from his
grasp. After a minute or so the ball came free, and another bloke sprinted away
managing to get twenty or thirty yards down the street before being brought
down and pinned under another pile of single minded individuals.
This appeared to be how the game was played. At various
points the ball would be freed and the seething mass of players would move to a different location. At one point the pile of bodies - and presumably the ball, although it was genuinely difficult to tell - was underneath a delivery van whose occupants had shut themselves in as they saw the forty or so berserk looking players sprinting towards them. At another point there was a break down some of the alleyways. Not sure what happened there, but a ambulance was called for a player who'd somehow had his head smashed into a wall down the hill near the bus station. At another point the pile of players was in the middle of the road with cars steering gingerly around them.
I did mention that the roads were still open did I?
They were.
Honestly, had the nice young lady in the tourist information
centre not given us the heads up I would have simply assumed there was a riot
going on. As it was , it ranks not just as the strangest, but also the most fascinating
sporting event I've ever seen. I don't know where the goals were, if any were
scored or who won. And I don't care. It was brilliant, in the way
incomprehensible traditions so often are, and I feel privileged that we stumbled
into it that cold, cold February day.
One of these days I'll make a point of going back and find
out more about it all, but we had places to be, so we skirted around the edge
of the town and pressed on ever eastwards. We paused for lunch in a rather
spacious and sunny lay-by just outside the town of Coldstream, before setting
off once more for the eastern coast, arriving in the historic town of
Berwick-upon-Tweed in the early afternoon.
The Caravan Club site sits halfway up a hill on the opposite
side of the Tweed from the fortified w area of the old town, looking out to the
open sea across slightly shabby rooftops, the river and the "pier",
which is actually a windswept sandstone harbour wall. The view is captivating,
if you like watching ships slide past on the horizon - which we do. Rather a
lot of our "in 'van" time was spent doing just that.
We did, of course, get out and about as well. More on that
in the next posting...
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