Ee ba gum, it's a bit parky

Between Christmas and New Year, leagues tend to give clubs local fixtures - not like the fifties, when teams could just as easily have a long away trip on Christmas Day, with the return fixture on Boxing Day - I am sure I have read somewhere of Middlesbrough playing Plymouth in the Football League in these circumstances. The same cannot be said for the Saturday before Christmas, where there is often a chance to take a long trip and get well away from Christmas shopping.

This year, Prescot were away to Harrogate Railway Athletic. I like club names reflecting our industrial heritage. The Harrogate & District Railway Athletic Social Club was formed by employees of the London & North Eastern Railway works at Starbeck, between Harrogate and Knaresborough.

I set out from a snowy Liverpool, where we would definitely not have had a home game, with possible alternative entertainment in mind, as I was not completely convinced by messages emanating from Harrogate that the weather was lovely and the game was going ahead. Snow was still on the ground coming in to Yorkshire. This blog uses historic county boundaries for reference, so Yorkshire begins between the parishes of St George and St John the Baptist in Mossley, or for the secular minded, between Mossley FC and the Rising Sun.

Past Huddersfield, the weather reports proved to be accurate, and I got some snaps in Knaresborough, and a pint in Blind Jack's, then headed to the game. We started in good light for December, with the regulars being joined by a couple of new faces, and a returning Colin Flood.

This being Yorkshire, and the middle of December, it was still more than a little cold. I do not find too much problem keeping warm, and my feet do not matter as long as they still move at the end of the game. That just leaves fingers, which need function throughout, despite the body's inclination to cut down the blood supply. Full gloves are fine for the left hand, which only needs to control the zoom ring, but on the right hand lose too much control over the shutter button. Bare hands end up cold and less than responsive, and I have never found fingerless gloves to be very helpful. I have recently tried running gloves, which have been an improvement - they keep most of the wind off, and are thin enough to keep control of the camera.

Not that they are completely effective, by the end of the game (a picture from the last 10 minutes or so above), it was time for the coldest part of the day, when you start moving after standing still for 90 minutes, and all that blood that has been cooling in your feet starts moving to make the rest of you cold, so it was back to Knaresborough and Blind Jack's to warm up.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen here.