Playing some darts at the White Horse and Bower pub in London.
First off Happy New Year to all.
For my first blog post of 2014 I’ve avoided two of my normal topics – Minigolf and Gluten Free stuff – and the suggestion from Anthony Pope on Twitter for a blog about #PacketHam, to bring you a post about a recent visit to a pub in London last year for a game of Darts.
Quite apt too, considering the PDC’s Ladbrokes World Darts Championship has just finished and this weekend sees the start of the BDO’s Lakeside World Professional Darts Championship.
On the 17th of December Emily and I met up with friends and fellow Minigolfers (and sometime bloggers) Oliver ‘The Machine’ Thomas and Seth ‘Clockwork Purple’ Thomas in London for some pre-Christmas drinks. We all wanted a game of Arrers and so we consulted the excellent online resource that is Justin Irwin’s Capital Arrows website.
One of the latest listings was for the White Horse and Bower pub at 86 Horseferry Road in the section on pubs with dartboards in Victoria and Pimlico.
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| At the Darts |
Arriving at the pub in dribs and drabs we couldn’t instantly see the dart board, but after Emily asked the man behind the bar where it was we were shown it was at the back of the pub behind a screen. As Capital Arrows said, it was in a secluded spot.
If you do head to the White Horse and Bower do take your own darts as the pub issue ones were not a matching set. Ever the mercilessly competitive character Oliver had brang his own darts, while Seth and I hadn’t. Oddly for a Darts meet-up in December Seth had also failed to bring his Pool Cue! Emily hadn’t brought any darts with her as she was to play the part of Tony Green for the evening.
In the three-player tournament the first round of qualifying saw all three of us playing in a 301-match. Oliver and his own darts won, meaning Seth and I had to battle it out to meet him in the final.
Seth got the win against me after some dismal efforts at getting the double, setting up a clash with The Machine.
The final saw the players face-off in a best-of-three legs match that was quite the battle. In the end Oliver chalked one up in the win column with a victory over Seth and his new purple dyed hair. A precursor to the colourfully coiffed Peter ‘Snakebite’ Wright’s loss in the PDC World Final perhaps.
A great fun start to the evening that was only marred by the fact that the only working lavatory in the White Horse and Bower pub on our visit was the disabled facility! All the other toilets were out of order!? This was unfortunate on a number of levels as the disabled toilet was right behind the Oche, so our matches were interrupted on a number of occasions by other patrons doing their ablutions.
We Minigolfers love our darts and we’ve played a number of events amongst ourselves both on and off the BMGA Tour, with outdoor ‘Links Darts’ at the seaside in Hastings and a couple of Christmas tournaments too. Our great Minigolf rival, Links Darts Champion and friend Sean ‘The Sandman’ Homer also rocked up to a PDC qualifying event for the UK Open tournament once!
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| Tim 'Ace Man' Davies at the Oche at the now demolished White Rock Gardens Adventure Golf course in Hastings. Venue for the first, and to date only, Links Darts tournament in 2008. Also pictured are Ace Man's opponent Rich 'The Bass' Hopkins (in black) and Sean 'Freebird' Homer (in orange, scoring) look on. |
Check out the links below for further details about the great sport of darts.
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