Bowood Away Days

 Bowood Away Days... Sunday 30th March

Sunday dawned early (the clocks had changed!) and bright! Beautiful sunshine accompanied us on the drive up to Bowood where we all met in the bar area for coffee and maybe a snack before we had a little putt on the interesting putting green, teeing off at 11.10!

Putting green with a challenging slope!

It was so lovely to meet up with folk we hadn't seen for a while especially to have Val with us. 

The bear overseeing the first! 

The course was opened in 1992, built on what was the oldest Deer Park in the West Country! 

Several of us had either only played the course once or never played it so the first round was a learning or reminding process! It's a long course, big fairways, lots of space, many bunkers and lots of water!

All three balls on the green on the par 3 2nd!

What a fabulous course it is - and in super condition. We all struggled a bit with the pace of the greens either too long or too short but we had some great scores in...notably from Sue S who carded 42 points!

From the third fairway looking back at the second green.

The course is long, with many trees, ponds and primroses! Sometimes we were closer to these than we would have liked!

Sometimes we were even in them!!!

There are many holes with doglegs and it was not impossible to be  heading in the wrong direction ...we knew better the following day!

15th looking back towards the tee

The water on the 15th collected one of my balls...we kept a record of such lost balls of course and all had a go at guessing how many would vanish from our lives...  the winner was Lyn who had the closest guess of 27...we in fact only lost 22 balls this year!

The wind was chilly but it was lovely to sit outside in the sun for a while as everyone came in.

Later we all met in Hils' room for pre-dinner drinks

Lovely to have Tonia with us this year!

Then we headed down for our evening meal... we ate in the bar area as they had been so busy with Mother's Day!

All I'm going to say is that Sue - our star player of the day - got very cold and we needed to wrap her in a shawl to stay warm... what happens on tour...stays on tour!

Monday

We woke to an even better day - blue sky, sunshine and hardly any wind!

The first tee shot of Monday!

It really was glorious again...this is a fabulous course!

2nd green

5th fairway!

Sometimes we were lucky...like this shot which fortunately did not go in the water!

Sometimes the marker posts got in the way...or this happened!

Silly billy!

There were some fabulous shadows...

...and the trees are largely still bare though there were swelling buds.

Heading up the 18th

Once we were all finished we had a snack and some drinks outside...this time it was much warmer without the wind...and we all caught the sun!

Who is hiding behind the umbrella?

There she is!!

Once again we met up for drinks at Hils and then down for presentation of the prizes from both days!

From Sunday...nearest the pin on the 2nd and longest drive on the 7th were won by yours truly!

 Hilary had arranged for Hidden Pairs on the first day... in third place were Val and Lindsay

3rd Place

In second place were Fran and Sue...

2nd Place

And in first place because of Sue's amazing 42 points...were Sue and Ruth!

On to the prizes from the Monday... longest drive on the 7th was Fi...

...and nearest the pin in two on the 6th was Hils!

For the individual trophy we had to use countback to decide 3rd and 4th...with Fran in fourth place with 34 points...

In third also with 34 points was Fi!

In second place with a fabulous 38 points was Lindsay!

2nd place

Our winner was Lyn with a superb 41 points! Well played Lyn...fantastic!

What an absolutely fabulous weekend we had!

Huge thanks to Hils for all the planning; to mother nature for the weather; to Di for coming and joining us on the Monday afternoon to process the cards and to everyone for making the weekend so much fun...