ONCE the fickle finger of fate points its gnarly claw in your general direction, it’s best to go off the grid, and disappear up a mountain or retreat to a favoured watering hole.

But each point of the compass Podium has attempted to seek out, seeking the clear blue yonder above the gloom which descended on Warrington after Saturday night, has been beset with a never-ending array of niggles.

One surefire cure-all, in these quarters, for Grand Final malaise (or your common-or-garden hangover) used to be an invigorating stroll around Paddington Meadows and back down the old New Cut Canal.

You can set off from Paddington Bank with the best of intentions but unless Bear Grylls is in your party, the Mersey trail has gone rather cold.

A quick hop over the barbed wire fence uncovers the meadows path, only in a slight state of disrepair.

Then a little further on it becomes clear there’s a parallel route, further into the wilderness, which at least looks like it’s seen a mower since the 2011 League Leader’s Shield came to town.

I’m all for the sterling efforts of our rangers and environmentalists but who truly believed that sacrificing a perfectly pleasant Mersey bank stroll for a plod through an overgrown field was the, well, right path to take?

Plan B was a day trip to Scouse Land, to recreate the heady times of the Guardian’s day-release programme, when up-and-coming hacks were packed off to Liverpool Arts College every Thursday to learn all about the dark arts of newspaper journalism.

Except this was the Monday morning and Northern Rail, for optimum efficiency, had no counter staff or working ticket machines at Warrington Central.

Two missed trains later (no reflection on the poor ticketing machine operatives left to stem the tide) I managed to board a Lime Street service.

Only issue was that the off-peak ticket I was issued, in the chaos, meant cutting short my reminisces, to meet the rail fiends’ arbitrary 4pm deadline for day trippers.

Back in town, boarding a Westy bus to head home was your correspondent’s own rank stupidity, given the Cantilever Bridge curfew.

The only lesson learned there was that while the fledgling UTC students might look spic and span, in their newly-minted suits, we might not have too many Rhodes scholars among them, judging by their tiresome bus bell-ringing antics, along a jam-packed Knutsford Road.

Motorists should just avoid travelling to the south of the borough, meanwhile, for the foreseeable, if they value their sanity.

For Plan C, I’m heading out to the wilds of south Cumbria to see former Guardian news editor Suzanne Elsworth, so it’ll be fascinating to see what obstacles loom between Bank Quay and Penrith.

  •  The least said about the Grand Final itself the better. Another fine Away Day Crew day out scuppered by the fine margins.

The energy was there, the enterprise was lacking. Chris Sandow wasn’t given enough of an opportunity to pull an ace from up his sleeve. But his mere involvement appeared to be touch and go anyway.

One final piece of pathos, for those Wigan ‘stalwarts’ who travelled in such numbers to the Challenge Cup semi-final, and other crucial fixtures this season, their title-winning homecoming parade was cancelled. Classy.

  •  Forgotten last week but here’s a receipt – congratulations to Mick Wheeler, formerly of this parish, for completing a sponsored cycle from Coventry to his beloved White Hart Lane, before a Tottenham game recently.

Known among blues circles and by characters of a certain age, the college lecturer (and cancer survivor himself) pedalled in aid of breast cancer research. A great effort.