Esher’s Walking Rugby legends, following successful trips to Dublin and Calais, extended their geographical reach Westwards, with a long weekend tour to Wales and Bristol.
Centred on Newport, the tour party of twelve, including Esher and Surrey luminaries Ty Lawless and Sarah Hall, played eight games in three days, with time off on Saturday to watch the Prem double header between Bristol and Harlequins at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff. On a perishingly cold Friday night, the Bishops travelled up the Valleys to a little village near Pontypool called Hafodyrynys. Under the lights, and the expert eyes of a field full of sheep next door, we played a series of games against Hafodyrynys and their near neighbours Taff’s Well. Since the Welsh currently play a different set of guidelines, we played games both under their rules, with automatic turnover after six tackles, and our English ones, with no tackle limit. Honours were even, with the Welsh winning under Welsh rules and Esher prevailing under English rules. Esher’s own Welsh ref Simon Marshall appropriately reffed all the games. Thanks Simon.
Saturday saw the party rise late and get the train into Cardiff. After a brisk pre-match warm-up in the local Weatherspoons, we watched the back-to-back Bears v Quins games with the Quins fans among us no doubt giddy to see them win away. This may explain the exuberant jollification and over-refreshment when we got back to Newport on Saturday night.
On Sunday, with hangovers not helped by an hour’s less sleep courtesy of the clocks going forward, we journeyed to our last stop at Kingswood RFC, just East of Bristol. Here we and players from Kingswood and neighbouring clubs were randomly allocated into scratch sides, all of whom played each other, with Sarah Hall making her impressive walking rugby debut.
The hosts were surprised how lively Esher’s oldies were after two nights on the lash, but no more surprised than we were. The M4 and M25 were mercifully quiet as we made our way home, knackered but very happy.
Another triumphant and fun Bishops tour – next stop Belgium in June.
