Rare Adventures

Category: Adventures

Stories about travel and adventure

Close encounter with the West Ham ICF hooligans

Over my lifetime there has always been a hooligan element at football matches. In the last 20 years that police and the clubs have largely got on top of the situation in and around the grounds to the whole atmosphere is less intimidating than when I first started going to football in the late 1960s.

In fact, in many ways, it is my generation that was largely to blame, growing up as a teenager in the 70s, the skinheads and other cults drove the obsession with violence at football matches as I was growing up.

So I was no stranger to that sort of match day experience and I’m sure there will be more blogs on this as I work my way back through time, but this one is slightly different.

Back in 2004, my club, Plymouth Argyle had found their way back from obscurity into Tier 2 of English football, now called the Championship. Against many criteria, my club could be seen as one of the most under performing clubs in the country, in fact in Europe. As Plymouth is the biggest city in the whole of Europe not to have a club that has played in the top tier of their nations football leagues, just my luck to be born in Plymouth.

West Ham United has just been relegated from the Premier League and it was one of the most anticipated fixtures of the season. Living in Bristol , it’s a 300 miles round trip to see the match, so my wife and I decided to make a weekend of it, we packed our bags and booked into a bighotel on Plymouth Hoe with our 9 month old daughter.

They went for a nice walk along the seafront and I headed to the pub to meet my mates for a beer and head to the game. Home Park was sold out and the atmosphere was bouncing as was the away end with the West Ham fans.

Players contest the ball near the corner of the soccer field during a lively match

I always remember the banter from the game. West Ham supporters clearly believed they should still be in the Premiership whilst the Plymouth fans were only too glad to have the a big club in their sights.

At one point the Plymouth fans taunted their opponents with a song with the theme being “Your not famous anymore”, and the West Ham fans coming back with a song along the lines of “We won the f@@ World Cup”, a reference to the fact that the 3 key England players from the 1966 World Cup final played for West Ham, absolutely brilliant response and top bit of football crowed banter, that went on all game.

The game itself was on a knife edge, West Ham took the lead just before half time and a local Plymouth legend Paul Wootton scored a stunning second half equaliser and the game ended in a tense 1 1 draw.

So I headed back to the hotel to take on daddy duties with Abby, and met my wife in the hotel bar. As we sat there looking out over Plymouth Hoe, I became aware of a quite a big group of blokes coming into the bar beside us and setting down for a beer, and listening to their accents, they were obviously East London and been to the game as well.

When it was time to head up to put the baby to bed I got up to leave the bar, it was then that the little devil voice spoke up in my head suggesting I should engage in a bit of banter and I couldn’t resist wandering past past this group of 20 blokes.

When I got to where they were sitting, I said, “I bet you were relieved to get a point out of that game, we really had you on ropes in the second half”. A statement that had no basis in reality, as West Ham were all over us, but that is the basis all football banter,

Up to this point, I hadn’t really had a good look at the group, I noticed that they were clearly multi generational. At the time I was about 43, and there were guys in the group at least 10 years older than me, possibly more, and plenty of them were around my age, with a few younger ones too, and they certainly had the look of people I wouldn’t want to have a ruck with. At this point I was glad to have my baby daughter in my hand for protection, so I held on tightly to her as I stood there waiting for their reply.

I expected them to respond with a “you must be having a laugh mate”, and com e back with some insulting comments about my team, but they seemed to take my comment seriously and there was a bit of a silence when they considered the next step, as if I was actually threatening them.

It was as if they couldn’t quite believe that I had the audacity to talk to them like that, eventually one of the older guys broke the awkward silence and asked if I would be going to the return fixture at their ground, Upton Park. Meanwhile, the rest of them remained silent whilst their leader was speaking.

What had started out as an attempt to have a bit of a laugh with fellow football fans, took a strange turn when not only did they seem to have a group sense of humour failure, they invited me to come to their pub near the West Ham ground for the return game. Obligingly, I noted the name of the pub and promised to see them there in February. I then gave them advice on where to find the best pubs in Plymouth that night and wished them a good night out and a safe journey back to London.

As I headed out of the bar, with absolutely no intention of ever seeing them again, the penny dropped who they were. Big group of tough looking males, no women, traveled down by train, not wearing replica shirts or colours, JESUS CHRIST, it’s them.

I’d just walked up to the most feared hooligan gang in English football, the West Ham United Intercity Firm, and tried to have banter with people who only really want to hurt people and have no history of having a sense of humour.

Thankfully, I had Abby in my arms, or I’d probably got my ass and plenty of other parts of my body kicked by that crew.

04/06/2026
Exploring Vietnam – 3 surprises

We are just back from our adventure in Vietnam, a truly wonderful experience and one that I will remember for the rest of my life. There are millions of words out there about all the things you can do on a trip to the country, and I will be adding to them over the coming weeks as I pull together the blogs about the places we visited.

Vietnam is a country in the midst of a modernisation revolution, on the one hand it has a become a massive manufacturing sector that most of us know for sports shoe brands, it even has its own car industry. Whilst on the other hand when you venture out into the countryside the rural communities are subsistence farmers, living off their land and selling goods at local markets. So not only it is exciting and vibrant, but it is also a place of contradictions, between the claustrophobia of Hanoi to the peace and tranquility of the mountains.

I thought I would start with 3 things that I did really expect when we were doing our planning, and hopefully these will really help you with your plans.

Vietnamese money

Their currency is an absolute nightmare, you can have a wallet full of paper money and not have enough to pay for a coffee, the notes come in lots of different denominations with the biggest being 500,000 dongs, and the smallest is on 500 dongs. Even worse, they all look quite similar, so it is possible to get into a horrible mess.

What makes it a little more difficult is that for all modernisation in Vietnam, they haven’t really moved towards credit cards, which are rarely accepted, so you don’t have the simple alternative to just tap and go. It is very much a cash economy and they use a payment system between themselves that involves a QR code and WhatsApp, which looked fraught with danger!

So, before you go, try to get some basic understanding of the notes and how they work, as everyone, young and old, are confused by the currency.

Tourism industry

You are probably planning to go because you have seen beautiful images of the limestone peaks around the north, or the twinkling lanterns in Hoi An. After I had been there a months it dawned me that this is a massive part of their national strategy and there has been enormous investment over the last 20 years to move the country from a back packers destination to a perfect destination for adventurers of every age, with massive influx of visitors from Japan and Korea in particular.

It is not a coincidence that the buses on the major tourist routes are modern sleeper buses or VIP coaches that are like travelling business class on a flight, these haven’t arrived by coincident. Hotels are all high quality, including the hostels, and as you move around the main centres you find endless trips and attractions on Tripadvisor. After a while the penny drops that these are all quite recent developments, whether it’s the Fansipan cable car in Sapa or Bana Hills near Da Nang, most things have been built in the last 15 years.

Where the Vietnamese have been super clever has been how the exploit their stunning landscape by creating things that make for brilliant Instagram or Facebook holiday photos, whether it is Train Street in Hanoi or you have to climb a mountain in Nim Binh, there is always the Instagram shot ready made.

Vietnamese food

I love Asian food and was really looking forward to this aspect of the trip, but I have to be honest and say that a lot of their food is quite bland. Breakfast might include a croissant, but it wouldn’t taste of anything because it didn’t have the sweet coating, similarly with other meals, we found ourselves reaching for the Soya Sauce to give it some kick as they sauces didn’t have much flavour. It is a far cry from the food you find in Thailand or even your local Chinese takeaway.

I think it is because they don’t use sugar and salt in the way Westerners use it.

Finally, you can’t but love the Vietnamese people. They are so much fun to be around, they are primarily a kind and polite race. To be honest, I’m not sure race is the right word because there are so many different ethnic groupings and something like 50 different local languages still in use. Around Sapa alone there are at least 5 different languages spoken in the villages around that region, as well as Vietnamese, and increasingly, English.

They are fiercely proud of their heritage and happily talk about beating three super powers, the Americans in the Vietnam war, before that they fought off the Chinese and even Genghis Khan couldn’t defeat the Vietnamese warlords, so they might be fun, but don’t truck with them.

Hope that provides you with a few hints to plan your holiday.

01/06/2026
Exploring Peru: Travel Insights & Mistakes to Avoid
I’ve now finished catching up on the blogs from our Peru trip in 2023. Writing up the stories and just remembering the experiences has been lots of fun, and bought all the memories of a wonderful trip.

Peru was our first trip without the kids for 20 years, so it was always going to be special. Writing up the stories has reminded just how much fun we had, in fact, quite a bit more fun than some of our subsequent adventures.

Talking to Wooksie about this, we concluded that the reason we had that much fun was the quirky people we met, which hasn’t been the case on more recent trips, and we believe that was because we did more organised trips and events.

In our more recent adventures to South America, Costa Rica and Tanzania, we increased our level of independence to make our way around and used one day trips, rather than multi day tours which we used in Peru, so that’s a lesson for us as we start to plan for our next adventure to Vietnam.

Here are the 3 things that stood out to me from writing the blogs.

Altitude sickness

Until writing these blogs I hadn’t realised how much this had dominated our trip. Wooksie was very poorly at one point, and took a couple of weeks to get over it.
1. The warning were all there but I didn’t take them seriously, all the advice from friends and online was “She will get over it”, but anything more that 24 hours look into getting some oxygen.
2. We flew from sea level to 4000m at Puno, in hindsight if we had gone by coach she would probably have adjusted with the gradual increas.
Use Peru Hop for travel

We used them for the 3 day tour south of Lima, but I wished we had known about the extent of their network. Their daily coaches connect all the major places you will want to see so it saves loads of messing about. We met nearly all the fun people on this trip whilst travelling with PeruHop. It is very much 2 star, but it works most of the time.

Don’t skip the Amazon trip

We did, and I regretted it for the next 2 years and ended up on a massive 2 day detour when we were in Brazil, we could have done it quite easily from Peru. The Peruvian Amazon is one of the best ways to see the jungle with more wildlife than around Manaus in Brazil, the other option for good wildlife is Ecuador.
18/02/2026
Conquering Rainbow Mountain: high altitude trekking, rolling rocks, courage and condors

The last adventure was the amazing Rainbow Mountain, or Montane Vinikunka. We had first seen the natural spectacle on an episode of BBC Race Round the World; it is a phenomenon that only became visible as a result of global warming around 2012 with the retreat of the ice layer on top of the mountain.

The retreat exposed a multi colour landscape that is one of the wonders of the world, however you define them. There are only two known examples, the Peruvian mountain and one in China.

We didn’t commit to this trip until we had completed the Inca Trail. We didn’t know what the outcome of that adventure was going to be, especially Wooksie and her ability to cope with the altitude. As you will have read from other blogs, our trip to Machu Picchu took a different route to avoid a fire in Dead Woman’s Pass, so we avoided the high altitude element of that trek.

As a result, this adventure took on more significance because we needed to prove to ourselves that we could cope with a big high altitude trek (though I had done the climb on one of the Lake Titicaca Islands), which would make up for missing Dead Woman’s Pass.

As always, we were picked up before daybreak by the bus for our long haul to the mountain. We stopped off at the next hotel for more adventurers to board, most were dressed as you would expect for a long climb up a mountain, with one exception, a lady who came dressed in trainers, a fluffy jacket and muti coloured leggings and looked like she had just arrived from a disco, it was Minni.

We cleared the traffic of Cusco headed in a new direction, with different villages and landscapes and after an eternity we stopped for breakfast. The normal people seemed to group themselves together and we ended up sat beside Minni and her friend and got the chance to know each other. It’s strange how we always end up befriending the less orthodox people in a group.

After an unpleasant altercation with a male Alpaca we got back in the bus and started following the offroad trail, to climb up to the drop off point. Cusco is at about 2500m altitude, high but manageable, by the time the minibus had completed the climb up the mountain tracks we were at 4100m.

When we got off the bus the altitude hit us immediately, it felt like a huge pressure on my chest and it took time to get oxygen into the lungs, but it was a real sudden shock, but the body adjusts.

Basically, we were being dropped off at roughly the same altitude as Dead Woman’s Pass, I looked at Wooksie and could see the lack of oxygen was having an immediate effect. We were all issued with walking poles to help with the climb.

I was amazed to see that most of our fellow adventurers chose to take the easy way up on the back of mountain ponies, the ponies carried customers up to the final station, which meant they only had to do the last climb, cheating or what!

We set off to walk the 5km walk to the summit, roughly 1000m higher in altitude. Progress was painfully slow from the get-go. I could see Wooksie was really struggling and suggested that maybe she should get on one of the ponies. To be fair she has had bad experiences with ponies in the past, and she wasn’t going to make an exception.

She then came out with the bravest of words, “I’m going to climb this f@cking mountain if it kills me”. In the light of what had happened in Puno with altitude sickness, it did occur to me that there was a possibility of that happening. On that cheerful note, we headed off.

The tour guide was carrying oxygen for emergencies and it turned out only 3 of passengers on the bus were walking up, Wooksie, me and of course, Minni in her totally inappropriate outfit. An unexpected consequence of trekking at this altitude is the impact on our bowels, there were 3 rest stations on the climb and the toilets were very busy places.

I was carrying a stock of caffeine energy gels and bars. We hadn’t needed them on the other treks but they came in very handy on this one. Each stage of the trek got tougher, I looked into the distance and saw the peak and couldn’t see anyway that Wooksie was going to make it, however, my girl is from Northern England and made of tough stuff, and she climbed that mountain one step at a time.

Eventually we reached a point where we could see the multi coloured, stripped slopes and I was relieved that Wooksie had made it that far, even if she had to go down, she had seen it, but she wasn’t giving up. At the final rest station, we downed the remaining energy bars and gels and made the push for the summit, Wooksie travelling one step at a time, but now I was full of caffeine and bouncing up the mountain like a gazelle then coming back to chat with Wooksie.

Then a moment of drama, the rocks on the mountain are very loose, and the mountain is very steep. The reason Dead Woman’s Pass was abandoned was because of the loose rocks and we had a demonstration of the dangers.

One of the climbers ahead of us dislodged a small rock, that started to roll very slowly initially, it rapidly picked up speed and headed towards the next batch of trekkers, nobody was looking up for danger and the rock hit a group of walkers like a bowling ball, none of them saw it coming and fortunately it was just a glancing blow before it continued it’s journey down through a gully and to safety. It was a great illustration of the dangers and why the Incas spent all their time terracing the mountains to keep them stable.

Soon after this we reached the ridge and had a full view of the coloured slopes and the valleys, as we sat and looked down the valley we saw a mighty condor fly out from a perch below and glide down the valley, if there was ever a message from the gods that was it. I asked Wooksie if she wanted to go to the summit and you can guess the answer.

We climbed up the last couple of hundred metres to the summit at 5100m and the Instagram shot place where there was a long queue. Then another wonderful thing happened, we spotted Bettina, last seen at 3am in a Huacachina night club two weeks before hanging out with Wooksie.

Big embraces, hugs and photos followed, we had made to the summit and banished the little doubts about whether we would have made it over Dead Woman’s Pass on the Inca Trail, this was much higher and much tougher.

Within minutes of saying arrivederci to Bettina we bumped into Minni, and we wandered back down the mountain triumphantly together. Back at the bus, we discovered that we were the only people on the bus to reach the summit. One of the problems with the pony trek approach is that the lungs don’t adjust and suddenly you are on path to the peak at 4700m with no aclimatisation, so they had all given up.

The trip back to Cusco went really quickly, learned a lot about Minni, who was an architect from Toronto and pursuing a part time career as a fashion influencer (hence the strange get up).

After a stop of for a drink, another confrontation with the angry Alpaca, and once the elation had passed we dozed all the way back to Cusco.

On arrival in Cusco, we headed for the Irish Pub only to find another pal from Huacachina, Cockney John.

12/02/2026
Inca Trail Day 4, the Monkey Steps, Sungate and Machu Picchu

After the drama of Day 3 dinner with the guides and the tip issue the night before, we were in bed very early, with only the very brave (or foolhardy) venturing out into the night for the makeshift toilet. The heavy rain on the tent overnight didn’t lift our spirits for the long trek in the dark.

Day 4 started early, the pots were clanking for breakfast at 2.30am and we were all woken up at 3am for breakfast, which I must admit was pretty hard going but we needed to stock up for a very long day ahead.

The porters were all over the gear like a rash, packing tents and equipment for their early departure. It later transpired that the porters had to lump everything, including waste of all kinds, back down the mountain to the catch the 6.30am train home. A more motivated bunch I have rarely seen.

By 4am we were packed up and ready for the trek from Winay Wayna gate to the Inti Punka or the Inca Sungate, or at least to the gate to the national park to start the trek. We loaded up and started down the trail in the dark and the wet, and to my surprise, within 3 minutes we had arrived at the gatehouse. The Winay Wayna camp was right on the boundary to the national park, so we now joined a queue to enter the park, which opened at 530am, talk about anticlimax.

Luckily, we were one of the first groups to mobilise and were inside the waiting shelter. As the rest of the campsite decamped the queue grew over the next hours to several dozen people, most of whom were stood out in the rain. We were then horrified to discover the gate doesn’t open until 6am, so all this early start was for the convenience of the porters, who had just had a huge tip!

One of the American lads had picked up a particularly bad stomach bug overnight. We had heard his mate complaining about the noise he was making throwing up, and now in the queue he was laid out on the floor but fortunately improved as time went on.

It was at this point that we realised how big the risk of a stomach bug is on a trek, because if we had all picked up this bug we wouldn’t have been going anywhere.

At 6am, the gate to the park opened and after sorting out the tickets we were on our way. The young people seemed to be in a race and hurtled off, but with Wooksie still adjusting to altitude we trundled along at the rear with Todd, who’s knee was reminding him of all the years of basketball abuse it had enduring.

After 3 days of trekking, the 4^th day was tough. It was 2 hours of climbing and staying mentally focused on the prize ahead. Wooksie was starting to struggle with the stomach bug by now, one could only imagine how tough it would be if the bug had developed 2 nights earlier on the trek.

Dawn bought daylight and more stunning views through the gorges and valleys through which the river flowed. Eventually we arrived at the legendary and dreaded monkey steps, the toughest climb of the trek and the last tough push, the each step was 2 or 3 foot high, and each required a big effort to get up, there were over 100 of the monster steps built by the ancient civilisation, yet another example of their incredible engineering skills.

If you are young and fit then you can bounce up them but if you were old and suffering with body pains, they are hell. It is a task that requires arms, legs, knees and the occasional helping hand from friends, I scrambled up them OK, Wooksie followed but Todd dropped behind and made it in his own good time.

Eventually, we came over the ridge to look down on Machu Picchu from the Sungate. There was a feeling of elation, I had expected some mythical sunrise but it was past 8am by the time we got there, so we hadn’t made it for dawn, but we had made it and the view was magnificent.

The next hour was spent getting the Instagram shots done, shaking hands with others and generally enjoying the incredible view from hundreds of feet above Machu Picchu. We then started the much more enjoyable trek down into town, stopping to look at the wild Alpacas but not getting too close, they are cuddly but evil.

The walk up to the Sungate from Machu Picchu is 3 hours alone, so we were glad to be walking down. As we approached the town the views got better as was the feeling of relief at seeing the end of the adventure.

On arrival we saw crowds of people queuing for access from for day tickets and many climbing the up the mountain to get a better view of the town. To be honest the day was a bit of a blur, we did a 2 or 3 hours tour of the buildings and infrastructure, but after 4 days of trekking and being up for 8 hours, our energy was lagging.

The history and splendour of Machu Pichu is like nothing else on earth and you cannot fail to be amazed when you are there. But there is only so many buildings, channels, drains, and terraces that you can take in one lifetime, and by lunch I had reached my fill. The guide who took us around was full of energy, and we tried to be enthusiastic but I’m sure our eyes gave it away.

I was also very glad we had not taken the additional package to climb little Machu Picchu, peak that is part of the park, the climb up another peak would have been too much, it looked incredible but by now I just wanted to sit down and have a decent meal.

We were shipped back to Aguas Caliente. Most of our fellow trekkers gathered in the same restaurant and we had a last meal together, chatted about our experiences, how much we needed a comfy bed and it was time to find our train, the one of those that had passed so close by us on the second day and enjoy the trip back to Ollyemptambo and the bus back to Cusco.

One last thing do not underestimate how much fun the train trip back is. Not only does it have a fantastic glass roof, comfortable seats and people coming around selling coffee and refreshments, you even get a Spanish style guitar band with a trumpet, so there is no chance of sleep until you get on the bus.

09/02/2026