You sigh and your shoulders droop. Never again. That never is declared once more behind a chalky cloud fired by your own breath against the bitter and black air. You repeatedly shake your head, as if being interrogated by some unseen ghoul. All that money spent. All the miles crossed by train, car or bus. All of those other things you could have been doing, and instead you were watching a capitulation in Greenock, a rout in Dundee, a hiding in Dingwall, a trouncing in Stranraer. Could even the worst cinema trip, 3D glasses, price and all, feel half as bad as conceding an injury-time winner?

Could even a doleful traipse around a retail park have foisted upon you quite the same gloom as a 3-0 defeat and one shot on goal? When you are there, an away defeat somehow feels thicker, more profound, more scarring, more alienating than its homemade equivalent. It jars. Losing at your place, there is comfort in numbers and routine, in dwelling and wallowing among people and bricks you know well.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest 10.30am on the coldest Saturday of the season so far. Hibernian fans wait at the pick up point on Easter Road for The Four In Hand supporters club bus. Destination: Ayr.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Four In Hand supporters coach, en route to an away match at Ayr United.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest With plastic bags full of food for the bus, chef Matty McNeil wait in the morning chill. His homemade, still hot, pies are an instant hit.

Something probably goes awry on the way home; flat tyre, cancelled train, shut pub. The away day festers on Monday and still rankles on Wednesday. Then, on Thursday a whisper niggles: perhaps Peterhead away next week will be a cracker, perhaps you’ll put things right at Queen of the South, perhaps you’ll get something at East End Park, you usually do, or so it feels in the blinkered logic of grief. Saturday morning bends your ear with talk of places on the coach and a ticket going spare; Saturday afternoon twists your arm with a home victory. You’re going. Away again, like nothing could possibly go wrong.

We have always gone away. If it wasn’t a steam train coach full of your brethren, it was the merry charabanc. The wild boys of the Brake Clubs even used horse-drawn wagonettes. Flat-capped cyclists travelled too, clunking past ragged-trousered walkers. Folk of the same town and the same team, banded together, representatives, diplomats in knitwear.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hibernian fan Davy is wrapped up against the bitter Easter Road wind. The bus is on its way.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ayr approaches and Elaine passes out packets of crisps to the bus.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Neil, showing off his cup final tattoo.

From the Brake lads smashing up shops and stoning goalkeepers, to those in a casual state of mind, some have not always had a glorious record. Most have, though. Most of us know – and have always known – that an away day is to be treasured and not wrecked. The plans and the early start, the meeting up and the setting off, the travelling and the arriving. Modern life has all but robbed others of such big days out, such jollies with their rituals, endless refreshments, collections for the driver and 5p poker hands.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Somerset Park, Ayr. The perfect antitode to the slick and soulless march of modern football.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The queue for the burger van as kick-off looms.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Hibs fan looks out from a gap in the old main stand.

The day is peppered with moments and sightings that provoke fleeting solidarity: the scarf draped from the car window, the minibus carrying 15 of “yours”, the nods at motorway services, the snatched prediction chats beneath Departures boards at junction railway stations, singing songs of your club outside someone else’s. To enter the ground – and how you are envied if it is your first time here – hop those steps and see hundreds, thousands of your people transposed to another place hastens the pulse and stings the throat. Perhaps nothing will go wrong.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The main stand at Ayr United’s Somerset Park on a perfect late autumn day, as the home team take on Hibernian.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hibs go one goal up and the terraces are happy.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The light slips away at Somerset Park.

Today the Hibees go south-west, and to Ayr, port-side to seaside. No Brake Club this: the pies are homemade, the chocolate truffles too. Truffles. Green and white seems to give a feeling of strength in unity, a shield. A bowling club welcomes the hoards, this jovial army. There is pleasure at thirsts met. On the bus, after all, Scotland’s finest allow not even moderation. At seductive Somerset Park they arrive among thousands of their singsong own. Everything goes right.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The first fans slip out the door.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The fans take in the last of the action.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest And it’s back on the bus for the journey home.

Daniel Gray has written Stramash, Hatters, Railwaymen and Knitters, and Saturday, 3pm; Alan McCredie has produced One Hundred Weeks of Scotland, This Is Scotland and Scotland The Dreich.

• This article is from the second edition of Nutmeg magazine

• Follow Nutmeg, Alan and Daniel on Twitter

