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Tours / 6 November 2014

Newcastle Tour, 3-5th October 2014

The banter had begun and it was still 2 months to go before we were all off on tour.

Why? Well the banter was in the form of emails flying left & right aimed at the organiser of the hotel best summed up in an email by one tour member,

Just so you are aware I am waiting for confirmation from Ferlin regarding the hotel.

The address for the Premier Inn Quayside Hotel differs to the details sent by Ferlin they are: The Quayside, Lombard Street, Tyne & Wear NE1 3AE.

And it is the Premier Inn Millenium Bridge Hotel which is actually East Quayside, City Rd, Newcastle-upon-tyne, Tyne & Wear NE1 2AN as Ferlin described.

If people could e-mail confirmation of your Premier Inn Hotel name and/or address by return, Ferlin will know which hotel people have booked that would be great.

People had booked a mixture of hotels so there were a variety of changes but Barker and Brewin stayed put at the Millenium Bridge hotel as it was cheaper and according to Google a mere 11 minute walk away.

Needless to say a few weeks later, when the train details were emailed to us, a response was sent back quite quickly, in fact an email was received within 7 minutes,

Are you sure? We wouldn’t want us all getting on different trains now would we!!

Finally with just over a week to go the Tour Itinerary was released (and seems the best way to scatter the photos over the weekend in the absence of any other tour commentary)!

Friday 3rd October

  • 1pm meet Peterborough Station
  • 1:46pm – Depart Peterborough for Newcastle
    – En route – Quiz
  • 3:50pm arrive Newcastle

Book into Hotels, then meet Quayside Premier Inn.

  • Kims Fine Ale Tour
    – Pub 1 Broad Chare NE1 3DQ Leave pub at 5.00pm then on to…
    – Pub 2 Bacchus NE1 6BX 5.10pm – 5.45pm then on to…
    – Pub 3 Lady Greys NE1 6AQ 5.45pm – 6.30pm then on to…
    – Pub 4 Please to meet you NE1 1EW 6.30pm – 7.15pm then on to…
    – Pub 5 Duke of Wellington NE1 1EN 7.15pm – 7.55pm
  • 8pm – Tour Dinner – Za Za Bazaar
  • ON THE TOON

Saturday 4th October

  • 8.30am – Breakfast
  • 9.15am – Meet Millennium Bridge Premier Inn

After the fine ale tour led by Kim, we were all keen and ready for our warm up sports the following morning.

  • 10.00am – Coach Lane Sports Centre – Benton NE7 7KA
    – Table Tennis, Badminton, 5 a side Football
  • 12.00am – Lunch Travel to Tynemouth Squash Club
  • 2.00pm – Squash match v Tynemouth Squash Club

First, the team photo….

…and another, with a bit more confidence, perhaps misplaced!

If you have plenty of time to spare, Tim, Helen and Eamonn were on the glass back so you can watch the matches.

However, in summary, even though in some matches there were some close games, clearly Tynemouth were too good for Stamford and were winning comfortably. Very comfortably.

The last player on court was Kim, playing at number 13 – could it prove lucky for him!?

You can see from the scroreboard that we only had one point from Eamonn (who stepped in for Jai due to injury). So we needed a win.

It really started to get exciting, it was all level between them at 2-2.

Word had got round.  Even James awoke from his slumber.

A crowd was developing.

If you’ve 90 seconds to spare, then you can hear the end of the match and the crowd cheering Kim to victory 3-2!

…and what a happy chappy he was too.

Tim Mazzucchi may never live it down, and there was a different view of the scoreboard!

  • 5.00pm – Dinner (& Speeches) at Tynemouth Squash Club

Return to Hotels, then ON THE TOON.

Sunday 5th October

  • 10.30am Depart for Tynemouth Squash Club
  • 11am to 2pm – More Squash
  • 2pm – Lunch somewhere
  • 5.30pm Depart Newcastle to Peterborough
  • 7.46pm Arrive Peterborough

A tiring but great weekend – with great hospitality from Tynemough Squash Club and hopefully they’ll one day pay a return visit to Stamford and we can repay the hospitality and be the victors!

A BIG thank you to Ferlin & Jai for all the organisation! Some would say faultless…..

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