The trip to Newcastle was to be the first time that all 8 of the travelling Nailsea boys were able to attend a game together. Marcus made his way by car, Rich by train, Ropes and Adam flew by Easyjet on the Tuesday night, and James, Nick, Stu and Smithy flew up at the crack of dawn on the Wednesday morning. The adventure properly began at Newcastle airport, when Stu checked the print-off to find the address of the hotel he had booked two months earlier. However, his companions were more concerned as to why the booking was for two nights when only one was needed, and worse still why those two nights were the previous Monday and Tuesday. On arrival at the Novotel our fears were realised as the receptionist confirmed we had no booking for that night, and that every hotel room in Newcastle and the surrounding area was fully booked. This proved to not be completely true, as after a marathon trawl through the phonebook we eventually secured a room in the coastal paradise of Whitley Bay, whilst Marcus, Smithy, Ropes and Adam stayed at the Novotel in a room successfully booked by Marcus.

Whitley Bay turned out to be a good place to stay, with plenty of bars that we didn't actually visit, and just a short taxi ride back to the centre of Newcastle. We soaked up the pre-match atmosphere in the packed bars, before heading to the stadium itself. We were then able to get in the impressive 3-storey "Shearer's Bar, where the England fans tried to outsing the thumping music. Slight controversy arose when the local speciality Newcastle Brown was bought, and we soon reverted to the very reasonably priced lager.

St James' Park is a very impressive Stadium, with enormous stands on the side where the tv cameras are located and to the left. We were sat in the smaller stand opposite, which allowed us to take in the surroundings, and also had the best atmosphere as the crowd urged England on to score the expected bucket-load of goals. However the game was very similar to the Northern Ireland clash, with England initially unable to capitalise on their total dominance of possession, and a slip by Terry almost providing another "San Marino moment". But England held their nerve, and the goals eventually came, along with some cracking near misses. And after 3 games, we still haven't seen England concede a goal, lets hope that run continues for a while.

With another 3 points in the bag it was time to hit the legendary Bigg Market, which we found to be a bit quiet, but then headed to the much livelier Quayside where we partied into the night. It is shameful to admit that the final day of this football trip was spent at a shopping centre, but we did spend several hours at the maze that is the Metro Centre, in our defence several of those hours were at the pub and the cinema!