Whisky in the bath

There is something to be said about going to an away match a day early. Particularly when the match is 4.5 hours away. Even more particularly when the town in which the game is being played has something called a Heritage Fishing Centre.

I’ve visited an awful lot of museums around the world. Some I didn’t like, others were okay, only a few have been exceptional. Museums like the Terror Museum in Budapest and the Vasa in Stockholm, are two of them. And I’d like to add the Heritage Fishing Centre in Grimsby.

Let me take you on a whistle stop tour.

You climb to the second floor and, having read a bit about navigation (and, if you’re like me, admired the ship models), progress through a trawler. Room after room of mock ups of the various parts of a fishing boat.

Rooms where men are hauling heavy catches aboard the ship in foul weather to men chipping the ice off the rails of the trawler. The comfortable captain’s quarters and the juggling cook at his work. It’s all there, made interesting and awe inspiring.

As you leave the boat, you enter the world of the shore. You walk by the pay office and discover the paltry wages for each man and then, obviously, wind up in the pub. From the pub you emerge onto a dock where the final shrimper is moored.

This is the Perseverance, possibly built in 1914. She was a shrimper in the Humber in the 1920’s owned by the Parrot family. You can read more about the Perseverance, here.

Finally, you walk through the final set of doors and find yourself in the café, where two lovely ladies ask if you enjoyed it. Which, of course, you did. Ah, but, your visit is only half way through because, having walked through the mock-up trawler, it’s now time to walk through the real thing.

We’d noticed the moored trawler, alongside the centre and gave it a good look at. Little did we know that we were about to walk all over it, expertly guided by Bob, the ex-skipper.

Bob took us (and a family of four) around the boat, teaching us everything there is to know about fishing. From the nets to the engine room, from the bunks to the captain’s comfy quarters. It was brilliant, made even more so by Bob’s excellent guidance.

All up, we spent about two hours learning about trawlers, fishing and how to know when you’ve got frost bite (yellow fingers) and we left, headed for Cleethorpes and the game. Incidentally, Nicktor told me that Grimsby is the only football team in the UK to play in a ground that’s not in the place they represent. It’s also quite a walk so, unexpectedly, Nicktor suggested we catch a bus.

Now, Nicktor isn’t known for his bus travel expertise in fact, the last time he caught a bus was when I forced him to catch the one to and from Marrakesh airport back in 2014. And what a fuss he made about that. But not today. He happily walked up to one bus and asked the driver if he went near to the Rutland Arms, the pub we were heading for. He didn’t but he pointed us to one that did.

We hopped on the bus (I ‘paid’ with my bus pass) and, eventually, headed out. It was then we realised how far we’d have had to walk.

The Rutland Arms doesn’t look like a pub from the outside. It just appears at the end of a row of buildings, down an alley of unremarkable design. There is a long line of chipboard hoardings down one side of the alley and just as unremarkable walls on the other.

Then, just at the end of the alley, there were two mobility scooters. In some sort of mystic clue, one was red and the other blue (Aldershot colours). Taking this as a sign, we entered the building to be welcomed with open arms, metaphorically speaking, and pints of much needed beer.

I’ve been to a lot of pubs in my time and The Rutland Arms at Cleethorpes has to be one of the friendliest. It was like going to Cheers. Okay, they didn’t actually know our names but they knew everyone else’s. Here’s a review I found. I couldn’t agree more.

We sat and drank and chatted with the locals about the game we were all going to see. As the pub filled up, more Grimsby fans sat with us and the chat continued. There’s something about sitting with fans with the same lack of faith in their team as us. We had a wonderful time.

Eventually, we formed a small circle with Callum and Bob, Callum’s father, another bloke whose name I didn’t catch and a woman. We found out that Callum has recently completed a round of chemo and is just waiting for his test results to find out if he’s clear of cancer. That makes it sound like quite a glum group but not at all. They were all mates and took the piss liberally. I liked them all very much.

Bob told us about the water tower, a story we loved, but I’ll save that for tomorrow when we decided we’d go and see it. For today, it was soon time to leave for the game, a good 15 miles from the pub.

We followed Roy who set a cracking pace. So cracking, in fact, that we lost him at some stage. Possibly when the stewards told us we’d gone the wrong way and had to retrace our steps before going round the back of their massive stadium. Eventually, though, we found it and sat down with Heather to watch the game.

Now I realise that the reason we were there was to see the game. And, of course, I realise that Aldershot are as predictable as the most unpredictable team in the world. However, our team was woeful. Grimsby were all over us. They seemed to score as freely as if we weren’t there.

Oh, look, there they are having just scored.

It ended up 3-1. I have no idea how we managed to claw one back. Not to say it wasn’t an excellent goal but it was a bit too little, too late. Suffice it to say, we didn’t enjoy the game very much.

We left as glum as everyone else around us and walked Heather back to her van. On the way, we encountered a lot of Grimsby fans who all greeted us with a wonderful generosity of spirit one rarely sees at away games. They are all very nice people, the Grimsby fans. I like them. A lot. And there was a lot. The attendance was over 5,000. They were strangely quiet, but it shows some great support.

Anyway, renaming ourselves Sad and Gloomy, we wandered back to the Rutland Arms where we had another beer before looking for a bus back to town. When we got off, a kindly woman pointed us in the direction of Spice Fusion, an Indian restaurant, where we settled down for a lovely meal, served by an unknowledgable waitress. The food was great, she was a cack.

Above are my fish cutlets which were delicious. My lamb makhani was very good too. I decided to try something other than lamb biryani, which I always have in Indian restaurants. And I’m glad I did. I also had a guilty peshwari naan. Not that the naan was guilty. Just thoroughly enjoyed.

Having eaten more than enough, which is always a bit too much, we headed back to the hotel. Nicktor declared that we were almost out of whisky (that was a lie) so we stopped at a small mixed business which was under siege from a bunch of kids of about ten years of age. They were trying to get in but the owner was having none of it, threatening to call the police and holding the door shut in desperation and gradually growing anger.

We managed to get in, saying we wanted to buy whisky. One of the girls asked if we’d give her some. I said no and when she asked why I said it would probably kill her. She laughed, which I took to mean that she’d been drinking hard liquor since the age of six.

Having made our purchase, the kids once more tried to charge the shop. The owner grabbed his phone and called the police. At the sound of the emergency services operator the kids suddenly vanished. Honestly, they were completely gone within a second. If there’d been dust around, we wouldn’t have seen them for it. An extraordinary event to cap off an extraordinary day of great joy and woe, which was slightly less great.

Not that we were completely finished yet. Having walked back to the hotel, we sat down in Nicktor’s room for another round of cribbage (he won) after which I said that I was knackered and was going to bed. Nicktor took his (plastic) glass of whisky and declared he was going to drink it in a nice hot bath.

I left him to it. I was asleep as I walked in the door of my room. And, delightfully, I was still sober.

To finish, here’s a photo of me in front of the screw from the Ross Tiger.