By minx2012
April 10 2007

As the Falcons travelled to Clermont-Ferrand to put in a creditable performance against a team second in their league, threats of snow for the weekend triggered a series of small-scale hauntings of the travelling support by a ghost believed responsible for the launch of Monkey Travel. After initially planning to travel on the Friday, I’d moved my departure forward by a day to Thursday – an effort to counteract the many time-consuming detours I knew I’d unintentionally add to my journey on arriving in Clermont-Ferrand. I don’t intend to get lost. I always have maps, well-written directions, and extra time built into my itineraries just in case. They never help.

And so it was this time.

One would-be travel writer and journalist was still convinced at 10pm on Wednesday night that she was travelling at 11 the following day, until a final check through her paperwork revealed she was actually on the 0800 train.

So I slept for most of the Eurostar leg of the journey, before navigating the RER with deceptive ease, then chose to sleep again for as much of the three-and-a-half hour journey to Clermont to block out my neighbour. On a practically empty train I get the interesting old lady with loud snorty breathing and French Tourette’s trapping me in my window seat.

The spirit was at it again though: By this point, other travellers who knew exactly which train they were supposed to be on, had flown down the M1 in a close relative of Steph’s V8 Interceptor, but still managed to miss the final check-in for their train by 25 minutes and only made it onboard by the skin of their pink shoes.

I blame my residual sleepiness for what happened next. On arriving in Clermont-Ferrand, despite having a very clear map with a highlighted route and street names, I somehow got lost to such an extent that I found myself back where I started. Some chocolate, a few choice words and a slight adjustment to the backpack, and I set off again.

Once I found my lodgings, I ventured out to find some (highly restorative) chocolate Pims (French jaffa cakes). There were none. I grudgingly settled for normal ones, headed back to the hotel and promptly conked out. Apparently during the ten or eleven hours I was asleep, tino and co found a gay bar – but he can tell you about that.

*

Woke up feeling less lost at half eight, and decided that boded well for a morning getting my bearings before meeting up with tino for a pre-match drink or four. I still took several detours, but in a much more productive way. Clermont-Ferrand’s centre is small and historical – think York but more so, with only one or two large, open, modern areas. It’s very easy, sticking to the main roads so as not to get lost, to miss all the cool things – and indeed any sign of life – about the town.

I was gazing up at the cathedral when I got a message from Leipy about Elliot’s defection to Bristol. I like to think that my small outburst of Anglo-Saxon words amused the French school party also catching a breather in the square with me.

I must still have been in denial about the Elliott business when walking down to Bell’s Australian’s (sic) Bar in the Place Jaude, because as Fletch, Blackie, Ian Peel and a few other coaching types walked past me in the opposite direction the only thing that came out was, “good luck later. I’ll be there.”

Bell’s Australian’s Bar.
Put a group of Brits in a strange town anywhere in the world and once they’d have headed for the local Irish pub. Now we also haunt Aussie bars. In all fairness, it was a very good place to base ourselves, with friendly staff (who responded to my laughable pidgin French with equally comic pidgin English in good humour), plenty of screens to watch the sport, a good choice of tipples and interesting kangaroo-themed toilets.

Far better than the first bar we entered after our tram ride to the Stade Marcel Michelin – le Sportif – which spawned the quote of the weekend when tino’s friend asked a policeman if he knew of any drinking establishments in the area – “but not that s**** one on the corner”.

I blame the beer for my confusion inside the ground. The seat numbers start from one to whatever in each block of the Stade MM – so when you chuck yourself through the doors at the top of the steps and only just prevent yourself from hurtling down the steps on the other side, look on both sides of the aisle for the number nearest the one on your ticket.

I was sat away from the bulk of the other Newcastle supporters, but the keen of hearing will have picked out me and a neighbour belting out some support from the centre of the Tribune Presidentialle. We achieved our prime objective – to annoy, then deafen – our immediate neighbours, ASM supporters all, by about thirty minutes in. By the second half, we were in fine voice, and the team had found some form too.

Post-match, I got a text from tino telling me to go to La Bodega at the nearby Polydome. I had other ideas though. I met a couple of bears and their guardians in the gaggle – and discovered just how infamous Gromit is. While the squad said hi and got on the bus, Toby’s small furry namesake was carefully tucked inside his owner’s jacket to protect him from the French fans who fancied swapping their scarves for something a little more unusual.

Then came something of an Experience.
I’m not religious by any means, but that doesn’t affect my view of what happened next. I had a Conversation With God.
Despite the previous consumption of beer, there were no toilets involved, just a once-Australian-now-British deity and five or six (all-female) disciples. I recall asking something intelligent about creativity in the face of relegation. There was laughter when He said Taity was soft. Any faith that still needed restoring after a strong performance was given a boost when even He said he’d thought about resigning a few times over the season but that the team was finally fulfilling some of its potential.
But then a voice came from above (oh, all right, inside the coach), saying that Jonny was being given a one-minute warning (he was still signing autographs, posing for photos and being a Nice Bloke), and Burkey said his goodbyes. It looked for all the world like he glided off (but He does tuck His polo shirt in like yer dad does).

Margaret, Helen and Kevin from the Supporters’ Club had yet to check in to their hotel, having been struck by that pesky spirit as well. A delayed flight into Limoges and a hectic coach journey meaning they only made it into the ground ten minutes after kick-off. But they wanted to stay out, so accompanied by Penny and Jane we headed into town, having been told to meet the others later in “the Irish bar”. Which one?
“Mulligans, that’s the only one, isn’t it?”
“I thought we were going to the Spill?”
Penny had also to get checked in for the night – but with her room being fairly close, she went off armed with my by-now battered but trusty map and instructions to meet us in the bar.

Gazing at a “you are here” plan of the town centre in the hope that it would also reveal the names and locations of the drinking establishments we wanted, I was distracted by the sight of a man in Clermont gear hauling a couple of kitbags down the street. “Shame my French isn’t any better,” I muse to Helen, “otherwise I could ask him”.
The man’s head tips and he asks, in a Kiwi accent: “Where are you looking for?”

Tony Marsh – for it was he! – gave us dead easy directions for the two best Irish pubs in town, declaring we shouldn’t bother with Mulligans, because “it’s rubbish.” We ended up there anyway, for quarter of an hour or so, waiting for Penny, before moving on to Murphy’s (huge jugs of stout, big tables, nice staff).

It was quiet when we arrived, but there’s something about gatherings of Falcons fans – they don’t stay small (or quiet) for long. Before I’d finished my chocolat chaud there was another pitcher of Murphy’s on the way, more chairs being scraped into ever-smaller gaps around the table, and much more volume being generated.
Special mention to Kirsty, Ned ‘n’ Ed, there thanks to Ned’s good fortune in a radio competition. This trio had been on the same schedule as the corporates, and had left Newcastle some time on Thursday afternoon. But on reaching Schipol airport, they learned their connecting flight was cancelled, and so didn't arrive in Clermont until 10am on Friday.

*

10am, fact fans, was also the time that tino finally returned to his hotel room on Saturday morning. Another story for him to explain, but I gather he was partly involved in the first weekend of the no-doubt famous-in-the-future Falcons-ASM exchange programme.

As he was leaving town at lunchtime, I was enjoying a wander around the alleyways that make up Clermont’s historical centre. Don’t pay attention to anyone who says it’s a dump – you’ve just got to know where to look. To find all the activity, head east at the top of the Place Jaude, then take any street on the right, and you’ll find yourself surrounded by lots of small, interesting shops.

If you fancy a picnic-type dinner, aim for the Place St Pierre, and enter the giant grey-and-green lego building in its centre. This is the Marche St Pierre, open every day bar Sunday, full of stalls selling fantastic fresh produce, pates and wines.

And if sweet treats are more your thing, go back to the Centre Jaude and look for Jeff de Bruges. It’s a posher Thorntons, nowhere near as expensive as the real artisans’ fare, but so much nicer than anything you’d find for a similar price over here. I spent 36 euros and at least an hour drooling in there, before being asked very politely to leave before I drowned any other customers.

The Place Jaude itself is also great if you just want to sit and watch the world go by. If you’re around just before midday, go and sit on the steps and wait for the big fountain to switch on with a 15-minute aqua-aerobic show. If you wander through the square at night you'll be treated to a subdued but pretty lightshow, the fountain glowing orange, lampposts inset with twinkling lights and coloured cells set into the pavement like a nocturnal yellow (and red and orange) brick road.
The only thing that spoils it is the horribly eighties Centre Jaude complete with massive C&A sign blazing from its side, and a big red plastic kangaroo (which I actually quite liked) guarding his turf outside Bell’s.

I watched the Newport-Gwent Dragons-Brive match in there, slurping hot chocolate, seize cent soixante quatre and proper French coffee, before heading for a fabulous three-course meal at L’Aquarella (restaurant specialising in moules frites and other seafood, on the Rue des Minimes at the top of Place Jaude). Then I toddled back to my hotel, hyper on after-dinner coffee and therefore not at all keen to go to sleep despite being physicaly knackered!

On Sunday I headed home. Another day spent dozing on trains – rounded off with the final effort of the Spirit of Monkey Travel. A delay to my Eurostar in France meant the train was running at least half an hour late into London Waterloo – and on a Sunday evening, any tube journey started after 11pm stand a good chance of being finished by nightbus or taxi, depending how far out of the centre you have to travel. I made the final Central Line tube of the evening and fell off at North Acton knackered but slightly smug. Unpacking could wait till the next morning.

So: Clermont. Somewhere picturesque and well worth exploring, and easy enough to wile away a few hours pre-match if you don’t ever leave the Place Jaude. But while the Stade MM is certainly impressive, it’s also strangely lacking in atmosphere - apart from the spooky one that tries to keep away fans away. Perhaps it’s the way the roof suffocates the sound coming from the upper tier, but it’s got a long way to go before it can inspire even half the shivers down the spine you get somewhere like the Rec, the Shed, or our own South Stand.

Another great European trip – but I was ever-so-glad to be home at last.