Fantastic weekend

It's going to be hard to describe how amazing the weekend has been, this might end up being a long post!

The team had been asked if we'd like to play a bout against Dublin, a double header, A and B teams. But in the end we could only get enough Belles to go - so off we went!

Firstly, on Friday it rained, not just a little - biblical proportions! Trains across to Manchester were cancelled and it looked like we might not be going anywhere.

But Colin to the rescue! With minutes to spare he drove us across the Peak District in a department minibus.

Our hostel in Dublin was great, right in the middle of Temple Bar, clean and with free toast and tea for breakfast. We arrived, dumped our bags and went off to the rock bar which sponsors the Dublin girls. I had one pint and didn't stay up late.

We had a bit of time for wandering and coffee on Saturday morning, as the bout was not until 4pm. I've been to Dublin once before so felt confident wandering on my own. We had a coach booked to take us out to the bout.

The bout itself was a bit of a shambles, inexperienced referees and non-skating officials meant that the scoring was all over the place ..... penalties not being called (or called incorrectly), scores either not being counted or being added to the wrong team - I've never played a bout with so many time outs!

The scores were a bit of a mess but with about 6 minutes to go we needed 26 points to win, but the final score showed us losing by 2 points.

We played really well as a team, I was happy with both my blocking and my jamming, and I got a good amount of track time. I even had a couple of power jams too.

But wait, we'd congratulated the other team, but an official enquiry was going on due to scoring irregularities.

Then the official final score was announced - we'd actually won by 2 points!!

We then went on to win the after party! Lots of dancing and drinking going on - although I only had one pint due to my hatred of hangovers and lack of funds. Although despite my sobriety I was still dancing. Our bench and line up managers decided to give out awards to best jammer, block and most valued player on the team - and I'm so chuffed, I got most valued player!!

Sunday was a lot more relaxed (and thankfully no hangovers!), breakfast in the hostel then I spent the best part of the day walking the streets in the rain!

Lots of street art and other interesting things to photograph. Some of the others went to the leprechaun museum, which I have to admit did look fun, others went on a boat - I just wandered around and went to cafes!

But Bob wasn't feeling well, and by the time we got to the airport in the afternoon she'd been throwing up for sometime. Although she suffers from travel sickness, this seemed so much more than that, and at one point I was concerned that she wouldn't be allowed on the plane - by the time we got to Sheffield she was very pale and still being sick - we had to get her Mum to come and pick her up.