Abbo
Joshua Abbott Joined: June 13th 2009
Logged in: July 5th 2009
Logged in: July 5th 2009
Travel Blog Posts
Thursday saw us leaving our billets at St. Aidan’s and moving on to Yarm School, about ten miles south-west of Middlesborough. After departing early in the morning we proceeded to travel to York, an old city which has been inhabited since Roman times and has been an important stronghold for many civilisations. We were given the instructions to be back at the bus by 3:30 and therefore had a free roam for the rest of the day. We split up and walked around the city. My group, which consisted of Skinner, Ben, Jake P, Night, Glasper, Dan Sull, Ian and Jake Argent went up the tower of the ministry, a staggering 278 steps (according to Ian) on a spiral staircase which was just 60 cm wide. Once at the top we had sweeping views of ... read more
Whilst most of us had lie ins, a couple of the boys who were staying with teachers had to go to school early before the mid-week game. Here is a match report by captain Cameron Skinner: “A for once sunny English morning greeted the boys as they arrived at Pannal CC to play St. Aiden’s. After winning the toss and electing to bowl, Tynan and Jake Sullivan both started strongly to take wickets in the opening spell to have the hosts on the backfoot at 3 for 19 after 11 overs. Wickets from Ian coming on at 1st change kept the pressure on and at the halfway stage St. Aiden’s were 5 for 45. After the break their middle order consolidated and commenced a fight back with a 6th wicket stand of 35. From there their ... read more
Today was a free day with our billets. A handful of us went into Manchester City Centre where we were more scared than we ever have been in our entire life, brisbane makes you feel a lot safer! ... read more
The earliest start of the tour did not begin in good fashion as we encountered our first bit of serious rain so far. We met at the school at 6:45 and following some farewells we hopped on the bus ready for the 5 hour coach journey to Manchester. The majority of this journey was spent catching up on sleeping from parties in previous nights. We stopped at some services to get food and coffee then went the remaining one hour to where we were playing our game. When we arrived we were slightly early and our opposition had not yet arrived. We chilled out for a bit then began our usual warm up fielding exercises. Skinner lost the toss and we were sent in to bat on a green wicket. The pitch looked reasonable minus a ... read more
Today was going to be our most relaxing day of the tour so far. Although late nights for 95% of the team meant that the 8 o’clock start was not welcome, everyone clambered onto the bus. Our first stop was Hambledon, a small village with a cricket oval. It was here that the rules for cricket were first drawn up and has a place in sporting history as the original home of cricket. Around the pub that the committee meetings were held there were paintings and drawings of the original games to be played out on the Broadhalfpenny oval (The Hambledon oval). It was interesting to see the origins of the game that has taken us so far across the world and cost our parents so much money over the years. Next we got back on ... read more
We left our mansion at the Holloway University after a big breakfast on the day that we would meet our first billets of the tour. We had a fair bit of sightseeing to do first and this included a trip to Windsor Castle. Once we found how to get in, and subsequently bought 32 tickets we entered the Queen’s residence and it was a sight not many of the boys had seen before with the size and structure of the buildings being amazing. After lots of photos with a beefeater we wandered the grounds and returned at 11 o’clock for the changing of the guard. This was good for the first 5 minutes, but by the half hour mark it was beginning to test our patience. Jacob Sullivan was intently listening to the marching band, saying ... read more
We awoke on Monday and stumbled half asleep into the dining hall for our last meal at the school. Another fry up with a cereal of our choice set us up for the day. However, there was one more thing I had to do before we left. In our time there, most of us had become friends with Liam. Liam was a Welshman who played U16 rugby for Cardiff Blues and used to be at the Charlton Athletic soccer academy. Needless to say he had made a fool of me in our game of touch two days previously with steps almost impossible to defend against. Liam had been slagging off Australians for most of the time we were there so I felt it was necessary to sneak into his dorm when he was in class and ... read more
We awoke in our dorms on Sunday ready for our first game. Adam Nightingale and I were to take the game off as part of our rotation system. Following a fry up and cereal in the school dining hall we went out to watch the military parade of the school as a practice for when a member of the royal family comes to watch them in two weeks. Though we started off very interested, after an hour and a half we began to get rather bored and were anxious to start our game We went into the match eager for a win, although a little worried about some of there players as we were told they were quite quick (80 mph). Coming out of the toss with a loss, we were sent into the field. Some ... read more
The final morning of mainland Europe started by some more long life milk. After quickly packing our bags we quickly got on the bus. Of course, the drive couldn’t be without incident as we encountered another stage of the rally and had our driver had to pull off some fantastic manoeuvring to get us back on the road. A number of us slept on this trip and awoke as we were coming up to customs in Calais. Once we were all through we drove up to the ferry which was to take us to Dover. We had had a fantastic French driver for three days who was so cooperative with everything we asked. He didn’t speak much English, so it was with much thanks to Carol Pahor with her fantastic French skills for getting us out ... read more
We awoke on Friday to another continental breakfast before starting the day’s activities with a visit to the largest British cemetery in the world, Tyne Cot. There were over 11,000 graves there and about 1800 belonged to Australians. Our guide gave us a run down of the events that led to this mass murdering. This was followed by a visit to a museum that had real preserved trenches, along with guns, bombs and other such things from the great war. Next we travelled to Ypres, a town that was destroyed during the war. The entire time we were there the Ypres Rally was going on which is an event that was being televised across the world. We went to a museum within the town hall that had stories from the great war. This museum focused on ... read more
