What do you get when you put together 4 fanatical football supporters, 1 car, 165 football grounds and a race against the clock? No, this isn’t a joke. The actual answer is “Groundhop Week.”
Myself and 3 other Northampton Town fans are taking on this charity challenge in October in order to attempt to raise as much money as we possibly can for two charities close to our hearts; Parkinson’s UK and Cancer Research UK. We’ve always wanted to do the ’92 challenge’ but we’ve gone one step further and we have set ourselves the target of attempting to visit 165 grounds (including the whole of “The 92” and many Blue Square Premier, North and South grounds) in just 165 hours. We anticipate that over the course of the week we shall be travelling in the region of 4,000 miles and visiting pretty much every nook and cranny that our fair isle has to offer.
The BIG map!
We aim to leave Sixfields Stadium, Northampton after the Cobblers home game against Crawley Town F.C. at approximately 5pm on 8th October. Over the next week, we shall be visiting and taking a photo of ourselves at 163 further grounds before arriving at Port Vale in Stoke-on-Trent at approximately 2pm on 15th October. Vale Park will hopefully give us the opportunity to tick off number 165 before we can sit down to watch the Cobblers take on the Valiants that afternoon. Non football/geographically-aware folk might think that this challenge is a piece of cake but the more we’ve looked into this the harder our challenge seems to have become… from Carlisle in the north to Plymouth in the south, Norwich in the east and Swansea/Cardiff in the west – that’s some serious mileage, I’m sure you will agree.
We hope that our exploits will be able to raise awareness and some money for two very deserving causes. Every donation would be very much appreciated. We’d also like to thank Natter Football for the opportunity to post this message and help spread the word, hopefully raising some money for two fantastic charities in the process.
You can follow our every move on Twitter @groundhopweek and on our website which is http://www.groundhopweek.com
Thank you once again.
Natter Football 