Boules at the Manor, Colerne
- By cobpc
- June 21, 2015
- Comments Off on Boules at the Manor, Colerne
Boules at the Manor, Colerne
By Lesley Hall
On the last Sunday in May, four members of the Club (Lesley, Diana, Mike and Sally) assisted at a fun boules tournament in the grounds of a manor house in the picturesque village of Colerne.
The event was organised by Rodney Priest, who tracked down our Club at Alexandra Park one Monday night and asked for our help. The event was part of a fundraising drive called Project 825 to raise funds for Colerne’s Church of St John the Baptist to
make improvements to the Church to make it into a community resource.
We arrived at 11am to find the driveway to the beautiful Manor House divided into pistes ready for the tournament, and gazebos housing a bar and food service, with a barbeque already starting to heat up. The wind and rain were doing their best to disrupt proceedings, but we carried on regardless and were rewarded with a few bouts of sunshine later.
The 8 teams all registered, most with unpronounceable French names, we gave them instructions (some having never thrown a boule before) and safety tips, and off they went. Luckily there were enough of us to monitor all the games and be on hand with measuring tapes when things got tight. The standard of play was remarkably good, with some ‘naturals’ among them. The winners were ‘Wonky Donkey’, a Dad and his daughters, who won every match they played.
The participants were very impressed that we had given up our Sunday to help them out with this event, and many expressed an interest in taking up the sport. One lady even went off to the local pub to persuade them to build a piste, having identified an unused space in their garden. The local council is also considering building a piste on the village rec. so it looks as if Colerne may be joining the pétanque family quite soon.
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