Day 101: FA Cup Final

So despite doing a house-sit and agreeing to stay home for four days in a row and get work done, I had a ticket for the FA Cup Final in London! A good friend of mine is a Chelsea season ticket holder and managed to get a spare, which I gratefully gobbled up!

I left the house around 10:30am after farewelling the host family who'd left around 9 for their London weekend. Annoyingly, it should've been a fairly straight-forward train ride to London from nearby Stroud, but buses were replacing trains for most of the route and it was going to take a comical amount of time. So instead I drove back to Oxford (about 1 hour 10 minutes) and hopped on a train, which had me at London Paddington in another hour's time.

A bit of time on the Tube and by 1:30pm I was meeting my mate at a pub out in the north-west of London not far from Wembley. He's lived in London for nearly 7 years now, and although I've seen him a few times in the intervening years, we still had a lot to catch up on. The weather was sunny and warm as we sat in a beer garden next to a canal, drinking a few pints and having a bit of lunch.

Soon 4pm rolled around and we hopped back on the Tube heading to Wembley. 10 minutes walk down the street from the underground stop and you're there. It's a huge stadium, capacity around 90,000 and the place was buzzing with excitement. We had another quick pint at the bars before heading to our seats and watching the warm-ups. Great view, we were in the upper tier but in the second row, so quite close to the action.

Lots of pageantry with parades, a band, kids running around, the national anthem and a crowd rendition of Abide With Me. Very familiar since I've seen the cup final on TV many times, but great to experience in person.

Finally the game kicked off and sadly for us, Arsenal went in front within 5 minutes to a contentious goal - both offside and handball! The roar from the Arsenal supporters at the far end of the ground was absolutely something else, like nothing I've ever experienced. It didn't get much better from here, and Chelsea were all over the place, completely out-played for the rest of the first half. I thought a few of the nearby supporters were going to have heart attacks or aneurysms from yelling so intensely!

Half time came and went, which we celebrated with another pint and some fried chicken. Chelsea came out fired up for the second half and dominated, but couldn't quite find a goal. Eventually their winger Victor Moses was sent off around 60 minutes in for a ridiculous dive, and it looked like disaster. One old lady in front of us even walked out!

But then a few minutes later Chelsea equalised! Another enormous roar, this time from the closer end of the ground, and everyone was dancing and yelling and jumping around. Game on! The songs rang around the stadium, willing the team on to score again. But they didn't - Arsenal scored their second goal just a few minutes later, almost while we were still celebrating it felt like!

Despite the deafening roar from the far end of the ground, you could almost hear a pin drop around us. Only 10 minutes left to salvage the game and alas, it wasn't to be. The final whistle went, and Arsenal had won the FA cup. We trudged out of the game and back to the station - everyone else was fairly downcast and depressed though I was buzzing from the adrenaline and the feeling of raw emotion on display. Probably helped that I'm not at all a Chelsea fan and wasn't at all bothered that they didn't win!

As I was walking back to the Tube, I noticed a sign saying queue here for overground trains to Oxford. So I did just that, skipping the long journey back to Paddington and then waiting for my train. Waited around 20 minutes before the train showed up, not a huge number of people got on and so I had a comfortable seat, air conditioning and wifi all the way back to Oxford! It was one hour 20 minutes, so a bit slower than the train in, but I passed the time chatting to the Chelsea fans, most of whom were circumspect. They were clearly second best on the day, and hey, they had won the league already this year!

Finally time for the last part of the journey home - the hour-long drive from Oxford back to our house in Amberley. I'd made sure my drinking all happened earlier in the day, so was completely fine to drive of course. Picked up supplies of a Coke Zero and box of cookies as the only edible thing at a soon-to-close M&S food stall, before jumping in the car. Thankfully the journey passed without incident and I was home around 10:30, 12 hours after leaving. Long day, but one I won't soon forget!

Shandos and the dogs all very happy to see me which was nice!Read more