Well, I was born in Newton Abbot in 1975, raised by wolves in the nearby village of Abbotskerswell where I learned to enjoy the taste of raw meat and how to communicate by painting pictures of hunting and fires on the walls of caves. I was finally educated at Coombeshead Comprehensive School in Newton Abbot after being shamefully overlooked by whoever picked the Primary School Football team. After proving that I wasn't a complete academic failure by obtaining 9 G.C.S.Es including a D in Art and Design because the teacher didn't like my obsession with drawing football stadiums (San Siro and Red Star Belgrade's Marakana), I then studied A Levels in French, Sociology, Business Studies and a GCSE in Russian (it got me free train travel) at Exeter College. I left Exeter better for the experience although slightly scarred by an unrequited love affair with a fiery red head.

I attended Aston University for one year reading Transport Management with French before I decided that Birmingham was a desperate hovel, most of students weren't very friendly and I decided to ignore the vegetarian diet (kebabs and burgers) and got very drunk instead of studying. I transferred to De Montfort University in Leicester to read Business Studies with French. I had a pleasant first year in Leicester though failed French, had a miserable second year catching up on extra modules to replace the ones I'd failed and then had an excellent but tough 3rd year in Paris working for a scouser taking full advantage of the weak pound to supply booze and foodstuffs to all the Irish bars in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Hamburg and Berlin plus the ageing Marlene Dietrich sexual predator woman who ran the NAAFI shop in Herford in Germany. When I came back to Leicester for the final year I actually enjoyed University and Leicester very much, although I was scarred by yet another unrequited love affair with yet another fiery red head.

After University I came back to Abbotskerswell and was unemployed for a while before Tony Blair paid for me to do a TEFL course in Bournemouth. I had a very enjoyable 4 months in Bournemouth teaching English to impressionable foreigners whilst living in digs with a neurotic divorced woman and her teenage stripper of a daughter. Bournemouth was too good to last so I moved to London and started working for a French wine company which was a great experience but it didn't pay so well so I moved to Eurostar where I stayed for 12 years before being made voluntarily redundant in 2011.

As for photography I only started to get into it in 2008 when I finally had enough money to buy a decent bridge camera (Sony DSC-H7) which then inspired me to get a DSLR back in the summer of 2009. I bought a Sony A300 and since then I've acquired several new and vintage lenses. This camera has been on several road trips with me and to a large number of football grounds. I haven't really got the professional level of kit to shoot at pitchside level but I prefer the atmospheric type shots rather than the match action shots. That’s my excuse anyway, and I'm sticking to it.

As for football, well my father took me as a small child to watch Torquay United. I watched my first game when I was 5 years old on boxing day 1980 versus Dario Gradi's Wimbledon, I went regularly during Bruce Rioch's tenure as manager, less so when Chelsea legend Dave Webb tried to run the club into the ground, I was present during Stuart Morgan's great escape season and there for the Cyril Knowles's glory years before the ups and downs of supporting a lower league football club with revolving manager's door until the present day.

As for travelling, I've always enjoyed seeing new places and experiencing new things. Again it's something as I've become a little richer that I've been able to do on a regular basis. Road trips seem to be the way forward as you can stop when you want to and take pictures of what you want to.

As for the website. Well I was inspired to try and create one by Jurgen Vantomme's excellent Groundhopping website which I was made aware of by a Dutch Torquay United fan called Rob who said the photos I posted on a Torquay United forum reminded him of Jurgen's photos. So, I'm blaming the pair of them for encouraging me to explore obscure places in the Low Countries where I can drink beer, watch decent football and take photos. All the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.