I've been making sports trips to the UK and Ireland since 1996, when my favorite American football ("gridiron") team, the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, played the US Naval Academy at Croke Park in Dublin. The first time I attended the races on one of these trips was Cheltenham in 2001; it was an utterly fantastic experience (I hit a trifecta that paid 454-1). Then the next day I attended Celtic Park for the first time and saw the Bhoys defeat Dundee FC 3-1, with Chris Sutton, Henrik Larsson and John Hartson all scoring. Needless to say, I love the sporting situation in the UK.

Planning is fairly easy, as I get train information from nationalrail.co.uk and local bus information from either tfl.co.uk or traveline.co.uk I've now been in pretty much all of the major train stations in London as well as Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow and Edinburgh, so I know where to go and what to expect. One can get food and drink at reasonable prices in pretty much every train station in or around these stations, at such places as M&S Simply Food, Sainsbury's Local or Tesco Express, or at counters like Upper Crust or West Cornwall Pasty Company (I'm now addicted to the sausage rolls at Gregg's, a national chain of bake shops, which are largely puff pastry and priced to go at 90p each when you buy 4. If I find a pub operated by JD Wetherspoon's or Yates's, I'll eat in there.

The mobile train pass I bought was the first time I did not have a paper pass; it worked great; you have to remember to keep your phone charged.

On my most recent trip to Goodwood, I worked out the best routing from my hotel in Reading, and found that taking a Cross Country train to Southampton and changing there to the Southern train destined for Brighton, which stopped in Chichester. At Chichester, Goodwood Racecourse arranged for double decker street buses to shuttle race fans to the track (about 6 miles north of the station), which were complimentary (admission to the stand I used was GBP 26. The shuttles were frequent as the race card ended, and I got back to Chichester with no problems whatsoever. I was a net loser for the day, but I met a number of fellow horseplayers and racetrack staff and had a great day.

I do this type of traveling to see non-sporting sights in the UK, such as Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill; I took the train to Oxford, and got on a local transit bus that ran out highway A44 to Woodstock, where the palace is located, at least 10 miles from Oxford. I had a great day there too (interesting, a little town called Blenheim, Ontario is the closest Canadian settlement to me, 62 miles due north of where I live in Ohio (Lake Erie is 51 miles wide (north to south) at the 82nd meridian).