Andy Potts
Bio
Community focused sports fan from Northeast England. Tends to root for the little guy. Look out for Talking Northeast, my new project coming soon.
Stories (91/0)
Pints & Parkruns: Chopwell Wood
Strange things happen, deep in the woods. Terrors lurk here, usually in the form of steep inclines. Chopwell Wood, in an unexpectedly rural outpost of Gateshead, boasts some nasty little hills. The steepest gradient on the course comes in at 14.3%, as part of an extended 500m climb about 1km in. Then, after a gratifying downhill, there’s another long rise, about 800m, with some 10%+ sections. Mercifully, the last 600m or so is dead flat. Just as well, since most runners are dead on their feet by this point.
By Andy Potts2 months ago in Longevity
Playlist: Stockton Calling
Cortney Dixon – Summer Love Well, this is everything you could want from a pop song. Catchy, distinctive, and blessed with a distinctive purring vocal that sends shivers down the spine with each verse. Cortney grew up listening to the likes of Fleetwood Mac, the Pretenders and Bowie and she clearly picked up a song-writing trick or two along the way. Summer Love, as the title suggests, is a bright, fun slice of disposable flippancy, laced with a slightly pensive twang.
By Andy Potts2 months ago in Beat
Not Pints & Parkruns: Durham City Junior
There’s nothing more reckless than a parental promise. Daughter has been getting ever more curious about Daddy’s parkrun trips and had a go at a few junior parkruns last year. Then winter came, it got cold and dark, putting the idea safely on the back burner.
By Andy Potts2 months ago in Longevity
- Top Story - March 2024
Playlist: PoliticsTop Story - March 2024
Jen Dixon – The Sound Political is personal. The rumbling scandal around the Teesside freeport might seem arcane, but the whiff of dodgy deals seeps into people’s lives. And, when those people are gifted songwriters, it sparks the creative process. Jen Dixon’s work has tended to be a response to her own relationships and feelings, but the more she read about the freeport in the likes of Private Eye, the more she was inspired to write.
By Andy Potts2 months ago in Beat
- Top Story - March 2024
Pints & Parkruns: Marshall Drive, Brotton
We knew this was going to be tough. Reports from other visitors suggested Marshall Drive was all about hills and mud. A look at the relief map showed four sharp, nasty-looking points of elevation on a four-lap circuit. A closer look suggested that not a yard of the course was actually going to be flat. Suddenly, I had an idea why this is one of the smaller parkruns in the region, typically attracting a couple of dozen intrepid runners to a playing field in a village near Saltburn.
By Andy Potts2 months ago in Longevity
Playlist: Folksy flavours
Amelia Coburn - See Saw With echoes of a nursery rhyme, and lyrics that gently straddle the boundary between fairy tale and dark fantasy, this is a delight. If a tribute to a great new song is that it reminds you of a forgotten old favourite, this one had hints of Copenhagen’s Blanketshow, another waltz with a hint of the macabre that got some heavy rotation in the early 2000s. The video, which continues Amelia’s collaboration with the Whippet Up puppet theatre, is also well worth a look, highlighting some acting talent to go with the music.
By Andy Potts2 months ago in Beat
Pints & Parkruns: Silksworth
There aren’t many British parkruns in the shadow of a ski slope. But when Silksworth colliery closed down in 1971, the regeneration of the site saw a former hive of industry transformed into a leisure complex. That meant finding a new role for the enormous spoil tip, and the man-made hill proved ideal for an artificial ski slope.
By Andy Potts2 months ago in Longevity
Pints & Parkruns: Hartlepool
Not many people think of Hartlepool as a beautiful beach. When the town makes an impression beyond its boundaries, it tends to be about a perpetually struggling football team (not even Brian Clough managed to win anything here). Or an infamous monkey, hanged as a French spy in the Napoleonic Wars. Even that beach come with a tale attached, involving an intrepid paddler and a life insurance scam. For Seaton Carew, read Seaton Canoe.
By Andy Potts2 months ago in Longevity
Life during wartime
Two years ago, Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. In my usual job as a sports reporter, I don’t normally deal with major global events. Many people better qualified than me have written much about this war. However, a couple of months after the start of the invasion, I spoke to Olexander Peresunko, a hockey player from Ukraine, while he was representing his country at a World Championship Division IB tournament in Poland.
By Andy Potts2 months ago in Unbalanced
Pints & Parkruns: Severn Bridge
This was a first for me: a parkrun that crosses a national boundary. OK, so the UN might not regard the Bristol Channel as an international frontier, and nobody was going to be checking my passport along the way (just as well, since the queue would scupper all hope of a fast time). But, for people on both sides of the Anglo-Welsh border, this is very definitely a dividing line between two distinct and proud nations. And never more so than during the Six Nations rugby.
By Andy Potts3 months ago in Longevity
Pints & Parkruns: Cotsford Fields
‘Undulating’ is one of the most deceptive words in a runner’s vocabulary. Almost nobody wants to admit to a hill on a route, yet hardly anybody wants to proclaim a course flatter than the proverbial pancake. As a result, parkrun tourists can face mountainous ‘undulations’ one week, before trotting along a flat path the next, wondering where the slopes will start.
By Andy Potts4 months ago in Longevity