We Walked To Hartlepool – How Are You Getting There?

Getting to Hartlepool from Brentford is a schlepp and a half no matter how you get there, and no matter how important the match is, but this Saturday’s clash in the North East is bound to tempt a far higher than normal travelling contingent, regardless of the kick-off time and it being televised.

Brentford’s away support has been exceptional all season, and in the past few weeks, in particular, fans have made amazing sacrifices both financially and logistically, juggling work and home commitments because, frankly,  money is tight for us all these days.

But however you get there Saturday… Remember… it could be worse!

Dave Lane

And I Would Walk Three Hundred Miles…

It’s February 21st, the day before the league game at Hartlepool United, and five very honoured and privileged Bees fans have been invited to join the Brentford party at their over-night stay at the Blackwell Grange Hotel in Darlington.

The five are a motley crew, some with a few days growth of beard, some (all!) in the only trousers, socks and shirts that aren’t caked in mud, or soaked through from the days blizzard, or worn beyond repair. Each had that grey palour and worn expression from twelve days on the road, and 260 miles of walking behind them.

We, the five bedraggled walkers to Hartlepool, have been invited by Martin Allen to join the players before the next night’s game, and all are assembled in one of the hotel’s lounges. The players look young and healthy, and slightly embarrassed by this rag-taggle collection of bedraggled bodies in their presence. The walkers? Well, we were really just exhausted, glad to be in the warm, and very, very grateful to the Manager for letting us join them.

Martin Allen presides over the event. From the moment he enters the room he asks for, and gets, everyone’s attention. With a profile that looks like it might just have been carved out of rough granite, and those hooded eyes that see, assess and evaluate everything all at the same time, he has the utmost respect and attention of everyone in the room.

It is Jay Tabb’s birthday, his 21st, and Martin gets us all to sing “Happy Birthday”. Needless to say, we all sing lustily. He reminds all the players to drink lots of water (Deon Burton is the only one present with a water bottle). He congratulates us on our achievement. Then he asks Pete Hayward why he did the walk? “Because I said I would,” Pete replies.

Martin stares at each of his players in turn. It takes him a good minute to do so, perhaps longer, but he wants to make his point. There is, it is obvious, no room for half-measures at Brentford Football Club. No room for anything less than total commitment. Only doing your very best is acceptable. All the players understand this. It is a poignant moment.

I look around the room at my fellow walkers: Pete Hayward, John Dempsey, Pete Atkinson, Dave Lane and John Anderson, our driver. We’d all made a commitment when we undertook to do the walk. Looking at them now, all really tired, dead on their feet almost, but just about home and dry (with only the odd 22 miles to walk that last day), I realised just what we had achieved. Pete Hayward would be fifty-one in a week’s time, yet he had walked almost the length of Britain to honour a pledge, which nobody was really going to hold him to.

Pete Atkinson, the youngest, who suffered badly on the first few days, but who never once complained, battled on, got stronger and stronger, and who was such very good company for the whole duration. John Dempsey, a man with a ten-month-old son and a partner left behind in London heavily pregnant with their second offspring. What fortitude and courage did he show? Lots. Dave Lane, whose shins were still suffering a month after the walk, so that he still has to attend physio. John Anderson, who had patiently helped us through each day, worked out the daily route, provided our food, he who had kept us going, and going, and going. And me, well, I was just grateful we were going to make it, that we had been fed, watered and had beds to sleep in each night, and that within two days it would all be over, because to tell the truth, I was completely exhausted.

The tank was running on empty. And in truth, the walk had been probably harder than any of us had imagined. Walking 25 miles a day makes the soles of your feet hurt! A lot! And after a few days your knees complain very, very loudly! And your ankles! And your back! And, because water runs downhill, all the sweat from your body tends to run down the crack in your arse, which leaves you with a very sore, well, I’m sure you can all imagine. And all these aches and pains were relentless. After few days, quite simply, they just didn’t go away.

True, we would wake each morning and all be amazed at the power of recovery of our bodies, from limping foot-sore wrecks the night before, to sprightly young dandies the next morning, but within a couple of hours walking, and six or seven miles on the clock, the old aches and pains would inevitably return, and usually with a vengeance. And I can tell you, when you walk into a stiff northerly, the wind does tend to dry out your skin, and sting your eyes. And when the wind is also accompanied for the odd hour or two by hailstones they do more than sting… And snow is cold and wet and relentless. It infiltrates the few warm, dry areas you have with monotonous impunity. In short, the walk was hard work!

I think we all had premonitions of this on the very first day, when after 25 miles walking we finally passed outside the M25! We were already tired, aching and cold and yet we had only just got outside the equivalent of the London ring road! Yet hard though things were at times, mostly we had great fun! For nine of the twelve days we walked in sunshine (it was only during the last three days that things turned arctic).

We walked through some wonderful countryside… the beautiful beech laden hills of the Bedfordshire Chilterns, the flatness of the Lincolnshire Wold with skies that go on for ever, the green hills of Nottinghamshire, the plateau of the North Yorkshire Moors, the salt flats of the North Teesside coast. We also saw the bad. It is no surprise that Margaret Thatcher came from such an unerringly bland place as Grantham.

And the desolation of the area surrounding the Swan Hunter shipyards near Billingham, where mis-shapen humanoid youths limped across forgotten housing estates of blighted squalidity to scream abuse at us as we passed, will live with me a long time. But mostly all we encountered was goodwill.

The kindness of people who saluted us, gave us money, and stopped for a chat was a distinct fillip. The text messages received from well wishers back home kept us going each and every day. I must also mention the good people of Doncaster Rovers, the patrons of the Grove Inn in Newark, who ran a raffle especially for our walk and the people of Tyneside, who were also especially friendly. And lastly, a special mention must be made for Ben Worley who, at fifteen years old, walked a whole day with us between Selby and York, which was, (he wants us to tell everyone) a whole lot further than his Dad, Jerry managed!

We had walked because of a silly pledge, to raise much needed funds for the club… we had also walked to raise money for the Helen Rollason Cancer Care Appeal. And we had walked because it was a challenge. But most of all we had walked because we love Brentford football Club, and because of Martin Allen, we once again have a club, which, on the playing field, we can be truly proud.

Rod Gowers