What started as a day full of hope and expectation ended with a monumental disappointment as the Lakeside Hammers truly hammered a sorry Swindon side and brought about an untidy end to our Elite League season.

Once again I traveled to the meeting with the BBC's Richard Crowley so that we could cover the meeting live on BBC Swindon. We were accompanied by Blunsdon track stalwart Roy Hicks. Departing from the studios in Old Town at 3.10pm we soon hit the M4 and then the North side of the M25. Over 120 miles was covered in just under 2 hours of easy motorway driving.

If you haven't been to the Arena Essex Raceway, it is about as far around the M25 as you can get if you come in from the M4 and all points west. Indeed, Richard's shocking pink Sat Nav desperately tried to send us on the Southern half of the motorway but I had already telephoned Gerald Richter, track curator at both Swindon and Lakeside, and he had confirmed that the north route was the quickest.

Further along is Gerald's workshop. It's all very compact.

But there's a lot to do. Gerald has to get on with the final track preparation and we have to get the ISDN connected at Richard has a pre meeting piece to do back to the studio in Swindon.

The main part of the Arena Essex Raceway is a large bowl with the speedway track situated in the middle surrounded not by a greyhound track, but by a banger racing circuit.

We make our way round to the main stand and straight and immediately meet up with a familiar face, master of the music, Steve Gobey, who also plies his trade at Blunsdon when not busy at Lakeside.

While Richard establishes the link with base, I take the opportunity to wander out onto the main track. There is no doubt that it is a very small speedway track. While the straights are quite long, the corners, whilst very wide, are incredibly tight.

Drainage is down to the centre green, a narrow strip of earth and grass. There is a slight camber of turns 1 and 2 but 3 and 4 look flat, as do the straights.

With two hours to go, Gerald is out on the track with the water truck but it is very clear that the track is rock hard. Whilst we tend to rip the starting gates and the insides of turns 2 and 4 at Swindon, here the starts and the corners have been very well packed. I try to dig my boot into the surface but give up pretty quickly.

The water looks as if it is sitting on the surface and it is clear that this is a track set up for the home side. This is not a criticism - in fact it is high praise. The job of the track curator is to create a racetrack that is safe, will afford good racing and which is in line with the instructions issued by the home team and promotion. Too often we hear riders whinging about being caught out when their home track conditions change from week to week. Well, the cruel fact is that the weather changes on a week to week basis and that is perhaps the biggest influence upon the state of a track. The track curator's job is to negate the effects of the weather as far as possible and provide a track that meets the criteria set out above. And Gerald scores full marks on all three.

Speedway is not alone in using conditions to favour a home team. Consider the Arsenal team of Highbury fame. It was a well known fact that the playing area at Highbury was very small, a fact that caught out all manner of opposition teams. Groundsmen at cricket grounds are not averse to preparing wickets to assist home teams. Nottinghamshire went so far as to prepare a wicket with two distinctly different ends during the 1990's to encourage their seam attack. The Blog is all about the "hidden side of speedway" and track preparation is a much misunderstood art.

But it already looks as if the elements are against us.

The Arena Essex Raceway track may be small but it does present at interesting set of problems for the track staff. The fencing panels around the entire speedway track all have to be removed at the end of a meeting and then put back in place immediately before the next meeting. This is a huge logistical problem but one that they cope with admirably. The car racing circuit around the outside uses the speedway track as a run off area so all fences must be gone when a banger race meeting gets underway.

Gerald tells me that there had been a big meeting the day before and that the carnage in the final was almost beyond belief. Bits of cars were scattered around the entire racetrack and across the speedway track and centre green. The speedway track wasn't helped by one vehicle which, having lost a front wheel in an accident, proceeded to drive round the speedway track, its axle gouging a groove as it went.

The track announcer sits up in a box suspended from the roof of the "cow shed" (their words, not mine). The referee sits alongside on the right of the box; the communications for mobile presenters and radio crews on the left.

Other than in the large clubhouse, which overlooks turn 1, there appears to be no formal seating at the Raceway. Indeed, most of the early arrivals have come along clutching folding seats and deck chairs

It may be basic but there are clear signs that the stadium is being developed. The large club house boasts some very nice sponsors' areas and viewing on the first floor. Downstairs there are a number of shops - a sweet shop, track shop and supporters shop - whilst round the corner there is a very well appointed cafe with tables and chairs dispensing large cups of coffee for just 60p. and an array of cooked foods (the plates of fish and chips looked particularly enticing).

Sky are covering both play off semi finals at the same time so a huge diamond screen has been put up over turn 4 to allow us all to watch what is happening at Wimbourne Road where Poole are taking on Ipswich. Sod's law states that we have got Nigel Pearson, Kelvin Tatum and Sam Ermolenko. I've nothing against these guys, but they're not Sarra! However, no Blunsdon Blog coverage of a Sky meeting could possible pass without a photograph of the fragrant Ms Elgan, so I took a photograph of the screen when she was on (sad, I know!!)

Busy on the telephone is Robins co-owner Gary Patchett. Gary's stirred up things a little by objecting to the way that Lakeside have avoided having to use Jonas Davidsson and Luos Tomicek, despite the two being perfectly fit enough to compete in meetings elsewhere over the weekend. It all adds a little bit of extra spice to a meeting that is already tense.

Later on in the evening Gary makes the comment of the night that has all of us doubled up. Having been covered with the dust cloud that descended upon us after the first heat, he comments that we now all have suntans like Terry Russell. With tears in his eyes, and dust in his throat, somehow Richard manages to control himself and carry on with the commentary. Trevor Claridge and I are laughing so much we cannot help ourselves!

One of the great pleasures of going to an away match is meeting up with the stalwarts from Blunsdon who have, in this case, taken afternoons off work to come along and support their beloved Robins.

Honestly, it feels like a home meeting! First of all there's Gerald, and then Steve Gobey. Next I bump into Clive Fisher, centre green presenter at Swindon, who's here to do a report for commercial radio. Further along there is Ernie Poole and his wife, Rita and then Shirley Jessen appears. I prepare to capture the Robins out on their track walk when Big Al, Alan Tarrant and fellow Blunsdon track staff member Steve Bradford appear.

Al, who's had a rotten year battling with illness, is in good form, bedecked in his Swindon race jacket.

Up on the screen Sarra and her co-compere Scott Nicholls are going through their pre meeting rehearsal. It's time for us to get across to the pit area where we will be doing the broadcasting.

Jurica's mechanic is making last minute adjustments to his bike in the pits area whilst James Wright is warming up his second bike in the area outside the pits up against the armco that surrounds the banger track.

The broadcast begins and it is immediately clear that we will have a real battle on our hands to hear what is going on through our headphones against the roar of the bikes behind us.

It's difficult to estimate the size of the crowd: it's getting dark very quickly; there's lots to do so we can't take in the crowd; and the bowl is very large so a good crowd could hide away quite easily in the nether regions.

Richard gets a pre-meeting interview with Gary Patchett and then we are off.

The Poole match begins before ours so while Richard and Trevor talk about prospects for the meeting I watch the first race from Wimbourne down on a small monitor alongside the Away pits. Poole hammer in a 5-1. Back up on the wall above the armco we prepare for heat 1.

The Lakeside riders are clearly ahead when they enter turn 1, a fact that was to be repeated throughout the night, but then they disappear into a cloud of dust. We shield our eyes as it descends upon us but Richard has to keep up the commentary even though he can't see a thing, his glasses are coated in a layer of the brown stuff and his mouth is drying at a spectacular rate, filled as it is with shale dust.

Adams is beaten by the flying Pole Tomasz Jedrzejak. Quite why Mr J has been so underused in British speedway over the past few years is beyond me. When I last saw him, riding in the colours of Belle Vue at Swindon some years ago, he looked a real find. Tonight he is one of the reasons why we are so comprehensively beaten (12 points plus 3 bonus from his 6 rides).

Travis battles through for a win in heat 2 with Cory buzzing away behind him and really battling for his one point. We could not have envisaged at this point that it would be another 11 more heats before a Swindon rider would cross the line first, especially considering that we had been the only team this year to have beaten Lakeside at Lakeside and that Leigh Adams has been nigh on invincible around the Raceway and Jurica Pavlic had hammered in a quite magnificent 21 point maximum on his first visit.

Sad to say, from the euphoria of a 4 - 2 in heat 2 and a 6 all match score, it all went downhill spectacularly as heat after heat the Robins pairings were left in the dust on turns 1 and 2. Jurica was tailed off in heat 2 and again in heat 7 before being withdrawn on the advice of the doctor after that, suffering from a migraine and general illness.

Mads hit the deck in heat 4 and was excluded. His miserable night ended with a fall in heat 13 - 2 points from 4 rides and both of those achieved on the wrong ends of 5 - 1's for Lakeside.

Troy Batchelor only managed to finish in front of a Lakeside rider once, beating reserve Ricky Kling for second place in heat 7.

At this stage we were finding it difficult to say anything positive. With Ipswich on the end of another thumping at Poole the conversation inevitably turned to to the way in which the play offs are organised. No away team (ie a team finishing third or fourth in the Elite League) has ever won a semi final in the years that the play offs have been held. Trevor believes that the semis should be a home and away affair, someone texts the programme to say that perhaps the team finishing in first and second places should be awarded a head start of, say 10 points, and then the matches decided on aggregate over two legs. Another correspondent to the show suggest holding semi final s on neutral tracks or bringing in a neutral track curator to prepare a neutral track.

When asked for my view I disagree, and still do. The fact is that there is an opportunity for the teams finishing third and fourth to qualify is enough as far as I am concerned. At present it makes the desire to get first or second in the table, and therefore a home semi final tie, all the more intense. Giving teams extra points away from the track to reward them and then asking for an aggregate semi final surely makes a mockery of the sport. You wouldn't expect a football team, not even the mighty Shrewsbury Town, to be given a 2 goal head start in a game.

Neutral track is interesting but we just don't get traveling fans in the way that we used to. How many fans would be attracted to go to say Peterborough to watch Lakeside and Swindon, or to Wolverhampton to watch Poole and Ipswich? I fear we'd have a token number in a pathetically small crowd in front of TV cameras for perhaps one of the most prestigious fixtures in the speedway calendar.

And then there's the proposal for a neutral track curator and a neutral track. I really can't see that one happening either. One of the most important factors in track preparation is the knowledge that the track curator has of the track - what works and what doesn't; what makes it safe to ride on; how the weather interacts with and affects the track and how such outside influences can be negated.

And so to the end of the meeting. The home pit area is jubilant; the away pit largely empty. We grab Travis for a chat about his fine performance but none of the others are around or are willing to speak. I take the chance to have a chat with Cory - he's really upset about his one point return but positive about the way that the year has gone, with the exception of the thumb injury. When trying to find something to say on air I praise Cory's efforts despite only scoring 1 point from his 4 rides. The fact is that he was there or thereabouts in every heat, beat Kling in heat 2 and should have scored a further point (plus a bonus) in heat 12, sadly falling and losing out when it was there for the taking. In his other two heats he had to give way to his partner as they battled to overturn potential 5 - 1's to Lakeside.

But Travis is our saving grace - the one real positive that we can take away from the meeting.

I get a chance to chat with Gerald at the end of the meeting as his team race into action, removing not only the air fence but all of the fence panels around the speedway track. Everything has to be cleared before he can leave. quite how he manages to cope with the constant driving back and forth from Swindon to Lakeside is beyond me - it's two days on now and I am still tired.

Another 2 hour drive and we get back to the BBC studios in Swindon at 1am and I fall into bed at 1.35am.

Since returning I have been send a further report from a source close to the Blog, about events at the Raceway.

Our correspondent writes :

Further to the Palace of Pinkness discovery - having had a very odd chance conversation with the Lakeside Da Vinci Boy who gave the Away changing room the Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen treatment, and very proud of it he was too, and very proud to tell me that he/they had also sought to upset us by removing all the coat/clothes hooks from the walls in there. He then took me to the boot of his car (I know I ought to know better than to follow strange men from Essex to their cars but curiosity got the better of me) and showed me the final part of their dastardly scheme of mind games, which he either hadn't had time to do or the paint wasn't dry enough (as Travis found out later - but that's another story) or he bottled it at the last hurdle (there ought to be a semi-colon in here somewhere but I'm buggered if I can figure out where - sorry) some bright pink and purple Bang On The Door (ask Steffie) curtains/bedcover/fabric.

I hope it gave them a good laugh doing it because it gave us a good laugh seeing it (and my lips are tightly sealed as to whose underpants were a perfect match for the colour on the walls!) and if they were acting on the advice of a Sports Psych then they woz robbed, it was a bright, vibrant, uplifting colour. To put a team on a downer they should have chosen dull grey, dingy cowpat green, grungy brown or that avocado colour that all the bathroom suites were in the 70's.

I'm not sure whether any of this is for public consumption, or just a bit of inside information for you personally, but if you didn't get a photo ................... I did (of the walls not the matching underpants!!)

with love from an anonymous correspondent!

This alludes to the fact that the away dressing rooms at Lakeside had recently been painted shocking pink, no doubt as a form of retaliation for the fact that the similar dressing room at Swindon is a depressing battleship grey colour.

Clearly the blog's luck is fast running out. Not only were Swindon dumped from the Elite League play offs, but last night (Tuesday) Vetlanda lost in the first leg of the Swedish Elite League final 40 - 56, the second leg being at Lejonen tonight. My one crumb of comfort is that I own a Lejonen fleece bought when we visited the Gislaved club on our Swedish tour last year.