大象传媒

Edinburgh, Scotland

I knew it was going to be a strange day when we stopped off in Berwick-upon-Tweed for a bag of pork scratchings.

The first person I saw was a barefooted man dressed as a pirate. He could probably have got away with it in the border town a few centuries ago, but in 2008 he looked a bit of a pillock!

Anybody who makes the journey from is in for a bit of a treat, with huge sections of coast on one side and the rolling countryside of Northumberland, the Cheviots and the Scottish borders on the other.

As for Edinburgh, it is about as a city as they come, so much so that one pub chain have allocated each of their various establishments to individual Euro 2008 nations.

The Three Sisters just below the Royal Mile is a stronghold of the Poles, though that didn't stop a decent gathering of Germans amassing in the back bar to watch their team's defeat to Croatia. Two even dressed in traditional German carpenter costumes - the outfits consisted of black jackets, trousers and hats, all cut with a rather sinister bias.

The Poles in Scotland are far more numerous than I could possibly have imagined - 155,000 in the major cities alone, and 40,000 in Edinburgh. By kick-off, 600 had crammed in front of the big screen in the courtyard - and the place erupted when pictures showed former Polish president in the stands.

The crowd certainly won our award for the noisiest on the road so far, singing themselves into a frenzy throughout the second half, only to be silenced by Austria's last-minute equaliser just as we were about to go to air.