Colwyn Bay's Llanelian Road

Lincoln City's first venture into the FA Trophy in many years saw a trip to Welsh side Colwyn Bay. It was certainly one of the more unique grounds that we've visited down the years.

I am going to be honest, before we were drawn against them in the FA Trophy in 2011/12, I had never heard of Colwyn Bay, neither the town or the football team. This is quite strange for me as I have a good working knowledge of the UK and it's towns and cities, and yet this place in northern Wales was completely new to me.

The lengthy trip to north west Wales took in some beautiful scenary and if you don't mind avoiding the motorways, going via "Snakes Pass" during the day is awesome, and then after you get beyond Cheshire and into north Wales, you're pretty much driving along the ocean all the way to Colwyn Bay. In terms of scenary, it is one of the most memorable journeys that I have experienced during my time following Lincoln.

Once we arrived in Colwyn Bay and negotiated it's streets, we finally got to the ground and it's single entry point. THere is certainly not a lot to do directly around the ground, and annoyingly it's not until you enter the turnstiles that you realise that directly behind one of the stands is a hill where you could EASILY view the entire game for free. The only issue with that hill is that you don't realise that it's there until after you've already arrived. If we do ever play them again then I might find my way onto that hill and watch the game from there.

Having a massive hill behind one of the stands, a small stand at that, makes the ground very picturesque to say the last, and in terms of location, it is one of the more attractive in the English footballing structure, with only grounds such as Cheltenham and Wycombe offering relatively more pleasent surroundings.

So onto the ground. You enter via a stand behind one of the goals, well, I say stand, that might not be an accurate term as it's a flat surface with a few buildings integrated into it. Amongst the buildings are the club bar, the shop and the toilets, however, there doesn't actually appear to be a place that offers a decent view. Heading around in a clockwise direction, you reach the corner of that stand and there is a small seated area for the media to park themselves in. It is quite unusual to see a stand that is just plonked on a corner.

Continuing clockwise you get to a two more stands that have the hill behind them. These are both seated stands but offer a minimal view of the action, although this is where a lot of fans chose to go. Heading around the corner you arrive at what appears to be a terraced stand, however, it's not until you're in there that you actually realise that it is a seated stand, an extremely small seated stand at that. The height of it's roof is roughly the same height as the crossbar, meaning that the chances of a decent view in this stand are minimal, at best.

The final stand is a pitch length terrace that is actually of a reasonable height. This stand offers quite a decent view of the action, but the thing that stood out most for me in this stand was that there is a mosaic on the back wall that is the length of about 1/2 of the pitch. I can't remember much detail about it now but it had a lot of different aspects to it and it's certainly something that you don't see that often at grounds, and I love grounds that offer something different.

In a non-segregated ground, it's always hard to tell who supports which team and this makes it near impossible to judge atmosphere generally, however, there didn't really seem to be a lot of people cheering on Colwyn, but maybe that's because the Imps were in the lead from very early on in the match. Whether it is like this in a league game is anyone's guess.

Colwyn fans are actually really friendly. I got speaking to quite a few and they are extremely knowledgeable about a variety of aspects of football. It was quite strange having fans of the opposition come up to me just starting random conversations, although it's certainly not a bad thing.

Getting out of the area after the game was relatively easy as there weren't that many cars around the area and parking appeared to be plentiful. It's not to dissimilar to exiting from Ashby Avenue in that sense, regardless of crowd, it doesn't seem to take a long time getting out.

Overall it was an excellent trip to north Wales and I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Colwyn Bay, ever since I have kept my eyes out for their results and I hope they do well.