April 2008 - Barnham Broom, Norwich
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Friday 25th April
The event this time was going to be a bit different. Darren had organised the event and booked us into Barnham Broom Hotel and Golf for the whole weekend. Barnham Broom has a hotel, two golf courses, leisure facilities and a restaurant.
With only 9 players playing on Friday on the Valley course it should have been quite a quick round, with three 3-balls teeing off from 11:30am. However, there were some very slow people out on the course, and after about 2 hours playing we were just teeing off on the 6th hole. Luckily things quickened up a little from there and we eventually got round in about 5 hours.
The Valley course seemed very long, especially into the wind, with many par 4s being very difficult to reach in 2.
See Friday's scores:
Mark, Bipin, Ed
Rob, Gary, Darren
Bipin (snr), Hari, Merv
It was nice not to have to rush about after the golf, with everything on site. We were booked into the hotel restaurant at 8pm, so had a while to relax in the bar and then go and get changed ready for dinner.
Dinner was very nice, but quite small - the sort where they stack your chips in a fancy jenga formation to distract you from the fact that you only have 6 chips. However, the quality of the food was very good, and it was just about enough for most (not sure about Bip).
After that we had a few drinks in the bar. The standard betting took place for the next days competition and a sweepstake on the total number of shots was recorded. We then discovered that Darren hadn't bought a winners trophy, and the main trophy was still held by Mick, so we didn't have any trophy to present to the winner the next day. That took us to closing time, and we all went to bed.
Saturday 26th April
Breakfast in the morning was pretty early at 8am, as our first tee was 9:30am. It was fairly standard with a contintental buffet and the option of having a cooked breakfast. Ed discretely (not) filled a couple of serviettes with a few croissants for the days round.
The pre-competition team photos were underway when Ed suddenly thought he'd lost the group kitty, so dashed back to his room to search for the misplaced cash - you'll notice in the photos at the top (top right picture) that Ed actually wasn't there and has been edited in later! He did find the missing cash, and returned shortly after the first group had teed off.
The competition was on the Hill course. This course seemed a bit more friendly than the Valley course, and certainly seemed shorter. Everyone had much better scores than the previous day. The round was also much quicker than the previous day, probably because we teed of much earlier, at 9:30, so there weren't many people in front of us.
Darren won the competition with a great score of 42 stableford points (no trophy to give himself though!), and Gary came second with 38. Adam should have walked away with the trophy playing off 36, but didn't quite make it with 37 points. A new rule now comes into play for future competitions. This is that if you win a competition you automatically get 2 shots taken off your handicap in the next competition you play in.
The results of the main competition can be seen below.
The winners of the prizes were as follows:
| Merv Walker | 938 |
| Actual total | 937 |
See Saturday's scores:
Bipin, Darren, Rob, Mark
Ed, Adam, Merv
Gary, Bipin (snr), Hari
Back in the hotel the sports bar was showing a crucial near-end-of-season football match between Man Uts and Chelsea so we all watched that. Darren got a bit upset when Chelsea scored, and then very excited when Man Utd scored, and then very angry when Chelsea got a penatly and won! Good game though.
Darren had requested that we swapped our restaurant meal at 8pm for bar meals during the afternoon which worked ouit quite well, as we could all then eat after the golf and during the football, plus there was much more food served from the bar menu! The total shots were totted up and it was discoved that Merv was the winner of the sweepstake, guessing 938 shots and the total was 937.
That evening we decided to get taxis into Norwich where we had a couple of beers and then went for a curry.
Sunday 27th April
Breakfast at 8am again in the restaurant followed by an early round on the notorious Valley course. The weather had been great the last two days but had been forecast to be heavy showers on the Sunday. As it turned out, the weather was pretty good, with only a few spots of rain here and there, but mostly bright and quite sunny. The wind still made some holes very long though.
Merv persisted in losing a ball (or two) on every hole on the front nine in any stretch of water available to him. In some cases it was quite skillful how he managed to find the water!
Overall the weekend was a good success. It was different staying in the same place all weekend (apart from the curry trip to Norwich) and was less of a rush than usual as there was no travelling required once we were there. Eveyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and expressed an opinion that we should do that sort of thing again.
Mick is organising the next event in September, so we are all looking forward to that now. Come on Mick, get it sorted!
See Sunday's scores:
Darren, Mark
Rob, Adam, Gary, Merv
Bipin (snr), Ed, Bipin, Hari
