On Thursday evening, I traveled from Edinburgh to Deeside which is in North Wales just south of Manchester - essentially, it is apart of the Greater Manchester area. On Friday and Saturday I was competing in the British Universities Roller Hockey Championships which is an annual tournament that brings together 12 university teams from across the UK. We were interestingly the only team from Scotland with the majority of teams coming from the South of England where Roller Hockey is "big" - of course, that is in relative terms.
One of the girls who practices, but does not play, with us lives in North Wales and her parents are part owners in a hotel/lodge near where we were playing - about 10 minutes away. Luckily there was space so we were able - for a small fee - to stay in two lodges that were one floor with 3 bathrooms, a kitchen, living room, two bedrooms, and a TV. In the common building, there was a spa with a pool, hot tub, sauna, and steam room. Overall it was a great place to stay. As a side note, there were Peacocks all over the property which seems odd since they are not naturally found in the UK. The explanation: King's used to import them since they were so beautiful and had them live on their estates. Over time the Peacocks got off the estates and integrated themselves into UK environment - thought you'd like to know!
Our first day of competition was Friday where we were playing in the group stage. Our group consisted of 4 teams, with only the bottom team not advancing. We lost our first game to a great side from Sheffield but then pulled out wins over Kent and Swansea (Wales). Some of the game against Kent was filmed - hopefully it will be available online at some point. I scored it that game, so obviously, it should be a highly-rated YouTube video. At the end of the day we placed 4th overall and thus had a quarter-final match against Manchester the following morning. The competition was quite varied with some teams being basically BAD to others that had lots of very skilled players. It was nice however to actually face some quality competition even though one or two of the matches were quite easy. Also, we typically play in gyms (since there are few rinks, let alone ones with roller hockey flooring, in Scotland), so it was a welcomed change to play on a real rink with a quality surface.
That night we went had got food to cook from ASDA (Walmart). What I thought was quite interesting was that we used Instant Barbeques which are essentially pan-sized grills that you can light for about 20 minutes of use. They only cost about $4, but allowed us to make burgers and sausages.
The next morning we played Manchester and we won quite easily. We then played Swansea in the semifinals with us winning once again...heading to the finals for all the UK, not bad. Anyway, we played Southampton in the finals who I thought were the best team in the tourney. Unfortunately we didn't come out with the victory as we lost 3-2. In the end though it was a great weekend and you can't complain being 2nd in Britain.
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