Am I Supposed To Be At Home?: Going Loco Down In, Err, Nairn - Nairn County 1 Inverurie Loco Works 4 - Highland League - Station Park

Am I a lucky sod or what? My wife has relatives in The Highlands and decided that she would spend three weeks visiting them, and she took my Son with them, leaving me at home, alone with my vast porn collection and loads of beer!
I did have a long weekend up there though and I used it to add another couple of Highland League teams to my collection. My original plan was to watch Inverness City's debut in the Juniors but I found out that they weren't going to play in their new Northern Meeting Grounds home for a while and would still be playing in North Kessock, a basic venue that I've been to before and is a bit of a bugger to get to by public transport. (I had travelled north by train). There was a military tattoo on at the Northern Meeting Grounds though, but I decided to give this a wide berth as it would no doubt have involved military bands, and as this is Scotland, said military bands would have bagpipes, which are horrible, hateful things. I'm not convinced bagpipes were invented as a musical instrument, a torture instrument yes, but music? No way.

So anyway, I picked the much easier option of a short train trip along the Moray Firth coast to Nairn and Station Park, which, as it's name suggests, is right next to Nairn station. In fact the first picture above is taken from the platform.

Station Park is a typical Highland League ground, one smart seated stand, one more bit of cover opposite and grass banking at one end (I have no idea what's at the other end because I didn't go down that end, probably a rusty roller and some tarpaulin or something.). I love grass banking, especially on a fine summer day as this was. It's a pity it's been eradicated at the higher echelons of English non-league football, didn't Lewes have a problen with some grass banking at their Dripping Pan ground which meant they couldn't get promotion one year?

Another thing I have never failed to get, and which have nearly always been lovely, at Highland League grounds is a Scotch pie and a Bovril, Nairn did not disappoint, the pies were excellent, and only £1,20. I had two.

The match wasn't bad either, Inverurie are amongst the favourites this season, there does seem to have been a shift in power towards the eastern and Aberdeen based clubs in recent years, the match programme (Yes, a programme!) even mentioned that Nairn would really just like to be the top "North" club at the end of the season. Yes I know all the clubs are "North" up here but you know what I mean!

Nairn in fact took an early lead, but they were pegged back fairly soon afterwards and Inverurie were much the better side throughout and thoroughly deserved the win