Southsea Pétanque play in Caen

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A few words about our trip to Caen to try and initiate a petanque club twinning.

4 Members of Southsea Petanque Club travelled to Caen, at their request, to initiate negotiations with respect to starting up a twinning with a similar club in France. A friendly match had been arranged for us and luckily the 3 travelling Southsea invitees are all strong players.

Three invited members were:

Peter Missen (President), Maureen Lee (Treasurer), Trevor Treend (Club Captian).

Pam Treend (an ex-England Petanque International) accompanied the group at her own expense.

From this Twinning Committee and the City of Caen, we had the name of a host contact, Madame Noel, who turned out to be in charge of all the clubs in the Calvados region and had organised the completion at the indoor arena we visited.

Caen City Council generously offered to accommodate us at their expense.

We paid for the ferry and Trevor took his car for transportation in France.

On Thursday 1st November the 4 Members of Southsea Petanque Club travelled to Caen on the overnight Ferry.

The ferry arrived on time and we headed towards Caen. We stopped early on for a typical French breakfast. Then on to the hotel Ibis in the centre of Caen.

We booked in to the hotel and got ready for a trip to the exhibition centre where the regional competition was being held and where we would play our “challenge” match.

Flicking round the TV channels there was one sports channel showing a petanque international match! A good omen.

We took a taxi to the exhibition centre. There were 100s of people there. All playing indoors. The exhibition centre had had grit laid on the floor to make a playing surface. A very flat playing surface, unlike Southsea which has lots of tricky hills and hollows.

We contacted Madame Noel and were lead to the VIP area where we were given a beef bourguinon lunch. Very tasty.

The exhibition match transpired to be in the grandstand with “high attainment” French players. The Southsea triple were split up and matched with two other French players each. Another Brit, Glen Floyd, president of the Southern Counties Petanque Association joined us to make up a fourth team. We played two semi finals, with winners playing winners in the final and the losers playing losers for the 3rd 4thplace. Peter is usually a shooter, but the French players all want to shoot so he was nominated as the placer and coped very well with the flat terrain.

Peter and Glen’s team made it to the final. In a hard fought final game Peter’s team managed a comfortable victory. Peter did have the French male under 16 champion in his team. A very effective 13 year old that was almost perfect in every shot he took!

In the lane beside the final match was a shooting competition featuring the top 4 players in France. The semi finals were won by the current world shooting champion and the ex world shooting champion. The current champion won the final quite convincingly.

Back to the VIP area for canapes and drinks to celebrate the event. We talked with madame Noel about the future and she left us her contact details. Trevor was nominated as the go between due to his previous twinning experience.

Had a good sleep and spent the morning and afternoon exploring the sights of Caen catching the afternoon ferry back to Portsmouth. Peter took his camera and put a few photos on Facebook. Further photos are here and here.

A very worthwhile exercise with high expectations for the future…

Many thanks to the committee for setting this up...

Regards

Peter