‘Whatever the weather my urge to explore doesn’t end’

In his weekly The Bar Man column, Jeff Hoyle discusses pleasant days out…Some people might prefer to curl up in front of the fire in winter, but for me the urge to explore never ends. In the past, winter trips were often about catching the football and following Bury FC wherever they happened to be playing. Eating turkey sandwiches in the snow flurries in the car park at Stoke City comes to mind.Another Boxing Day saw us crossing the canal in Wigan on the way to the game. The Bar Wife was wearing her Paddington Bear hat pulled low down to keep the snow out of her eyes. “I can’t see out,” she said and for a few seconds I thought that at last she had mastered the northern accent.

This year there was a great temptation to head north again for the big Step Nine North West Counties League derby, when Bury took on Ramsbottom United on Boxing Day, the Lancashire equivalent of Heacham v Downham, though the crowd of 5,834 was slightly higher than the 244 in Norfolk.In the end, the weather forecast and travel conditions saw us cross the road to watch Lynn’s engrossing tussle with Needham Market, but we were not to be denied our post-Christmas trip. The Bar Wife had seen that there was an exhibition of paintings by Vanessa Bell at the Milton Keynes Gallery and I readily agreed to go, especially when a check of fixtures showed that we could take in a game at Real Bedford on the way (ground #263 for me).A word of warning if you are using the A1. There is an improvement scheme as Caxton Gibbet junction causing long delays and it is due to continue until spring 2027. It is where the Bedford Road meets the A1, so it was hard to avoid. Still, we made the Anchor at Great Barford in time for lunch and managed a pint of the truly excellent Brewpoint Anchorman, the fifth pint of the year that I scored 5/5. Would the Saturday after Christmas be dead at the game, with more dogs than people, or would the festive spirit and thirst for live entertainment continue towards the new year? It was very much the latter, with a record crowd of over 500 at the game, which would have caused a bit of congestion on its own as the ground is down a narrow lane near Cardington, just south of the A421.However, adjoining the McMullen Park is The New Eyrie, home of Bedford Town who had a game with over 1,000 spectators taking place at the same time. We were lucky enough to find a space at the far end of the New Eyrie car park and saw a fun game in which the home team triumphed 5-1. It took a while to exit at full time, but after a night in an excellent hotel near Milton Keynes we hit the exhibition. In one sense it was great, as almost all the pictures on display were by Bell, rather than some padded out with friends, relations or influences, but I didn’t find many of the pictures very memorable. Maybe a still life with a bottle of Bass, but that was more about the beer than the painting.Nice café though and it was an interesting puzzle trying to decipher the relationships between the members of the Bloomsbury Group. And so ended 2024. Every year we joke that we will make the most of it. I think we did OK in 2024 and hope that 2025 will be as interesting and enjoyable.