Start of the Petanque season in Stockport

Today marks the start of the Pétanque season in Stockport as the Woodstock Pétanque Club take to the terrain at Alexandra Park in Edgeley.

The club meets on the second and fourth Sunday of the month and play between 1pm and 4pm.

Playing a shot last April

The club receiving coaching from the English Petanque Association last summer

Check out the Woodstock Pétanque Club Facebook Group, Twitter and website for more information.

The Woodstock Petanque Club

Mini Golf Masters

This week will see a number of Mini Masters miniature golf tournaments taking place.

Teeing-off on Wednesday 4th April is the first MiniLinks Mini Major of the year at MiniLinks in Lytham Saint Annes.

Hole 1 of the MiniLinks Par-3 miniature golf course

DinoFalls Adventure Golf at Trafford Golf Centre in Manchester is hosting its first-ever DinoFalls Masters tournament between Thursday 5th and Sunday 8th April.

On Sunday 8th April two CrazyPutt Masters Tournaments are being held at the CrazyPutt Adventure Golf courses in Nottingham and London.

You can find the CrazyPutt Adventure Golf courses at the Riverside Family Golf Centre in Nottingham and the N1 Golf Greenwich Peninsula Golf Range in London.

In April 2007 I made my British Minigolf Association tournament debut in the British Masters. This year the 18th staging of the event will be at Mr Mulligan’s Dino Golf in Sidcup on Sunday 22 April.

We visited the Adventure Golf courses in Sidcup back in 2010

Back in 2009 I won the Mini Masters at the Championship Miniature Golf course in Manchester.

The 2009 Mini Masters Champion

Balls

My April Fools' Day story yesterday may have been a load of balls, but chipping in a rugby ball shaped golf ball might've got me closer to the hole than all these shots with pro minigolf balls.

At the Blackpool Pleasure Beach Adventure Golf course in 2008. Time has certainly flown by since that visit

What a postcard!

A look at a Blackpool beach scene in 1975.

We bought this great old postcard from a car boot sale yesterday. It was just 10p. What a scene.

Look at that sunburn!

We've been to Blackpool a fair few times over the years, but we've never seen the beach anything like that. Although it was sunburn weather on my visit to nearby St Annes on Sea last year.

The card has a nice special postmark on it with a list of the resorts that make up the 'Happy Holiday Coast'

We'll be heading back to Blackpool soon as we've heard there's an Adventure Golf course up the Blackpool Tower!

Related blog posts:
- Blackpool
- Postcards

Happy April Fools' Day!

Happy April Fools' Day!

Did you get reeled in by our egg-shaped minigolf story or not?

A spoof story about an egg-shaped golf ball on April Fools' Day AND Easter Sunday was impossible to resist

New regulation minigolf ball

We've heard there's going to be a new shape of golf ball allowed in minigolf tournaments - it's oval!

The egg-shaped ball will certainly add to the unpredictable nature of Crazy Golf tournaments.

Who knows who hatched the ingenious plan to inject more fun into the sport of minigolf. Hopefully we'll find out later today

Popular in our antipodes, the balls are used for the game of Golf Cross aka Kiwi Ball and enjoyed a short trial run at Adventure Island Mini Golf in Birmingham back in 2013 thanks to minigolf star Tiger Pragnell. Unfortunately the test event ended prematurely with myself and team-mate Adam Kelly in the lead. I'm looking forward to using the ball again - even though it rendered any course notes irrelevant with it's ludicrous bounce and roll.

There are thousands of different specialist minigolf balls available for use in tournament play, with hundreds more produced each year. I own a fair few - including a special Ball of Fame created to celebrate the second time the Midlands Minigolf Club won the British Club Championships

With the sport gaining momentum down under it's little surprise that the strange new ball is going to be used in competitions more often. The New Zealand Mini Golf Federation recently hosted the second NZ Minigolf Open competition at Lilliputt's T Rex Alley and Safari mini golf on Tamaki Drive in Auckland. The pro event was won by Australia's Allan 'The Putter King' Cox.

I bet my mate, minigolf rival and North West rugby correspondent Marc 'The Roller' Bazeley will be pleased to hear about the move too.

We've played quite a few variants of 'golf' including most kinds of miniature golf, although we're yet to play the Putt Putt brand of the game. Some of the versions include Pitch & Putt, FootGolf, Crazy Golf Pool, FootPool and Pit-Pat.

A look at the new Jurassic Bay Adventure Golf course in Shanklin, Isle of Wight

The new Jurassic Bay Adventure Golf course in Shanklin on the Isle of Wight is now open.

Many thanks to my mate Dan Paynton for sending over these snaps from his visit to the new Jurassic Bay Adventure Golf course in Shanklin on the Isle of Wight.

Dan visited and played both the new Jurassic course and the Pirates Cove course.

 

The Pirates Cove Adventure Golf course - when we first visited in 2008 this area was a grass Putting Course

It's crazy to see how many transformations the Jurassic course has had in the last few years!

The first version of hole 12 we saw in 2008

In 2008 we visited the Isle of Wight and the first course we played there - and our 63rd overall on our Crazy World of Minigolf Tour - was the Miniature Golf course on Shanklin Seafront. Since that visit the course has been refurbished and changed from the concrete 'Beton' style to an 'Arnold Palmer Putting Course'. We played that version of the course in 2016.

It'll be interesting to see how hole 13 has changed on the new dinosaur adventure golf course

A view of the course in 2016 - the windmill is now gone

Hole 10 in 2016

Hole 12 in 2016

Interestingly the base layout has remained largely unchanged in the three iterations. It must be the only minigolf course in the world that has had these particular changes made to it over the years.

This is how the large banked dogleg hole looked in 2008

This is how it looked in 2016

The 2018 version

Check out the post from our visit to the course in its last guise to see more of the differences and similarities.

Visit the Shanklin Seafront website for more information, opening times and prices.

Related blog posts:
- Shanklin
- Isle of Wight
- Crazy World of Minigolf Tour

What a typo!

What about this for a typo...

Whoops

Findar in Stockport's Parks

Checking out the new Findar app at Adswood Park in Cheadle Hulme.

This morning we popped over the road to our local park for a wander and to try out the new Findar app.

Starting this Bank Holiday weekend 15 parks in the borough will feature in a trial of a new  Augmented Reality app, similar to Pokemon Go, which allows park visitors to spot four characters. The pilot will last until June.

The first of the Findar characters we found on our visit to Adswood Park

On our 'thorough' walk around and through Adswood Park we found three of the four characters. We can't think where number four is!

We spotted this sign from the other side of the park. Emily found a witch there

The app has been created by Stockport resident Chris Hunt and is a UK first. Chris has said “There’s a number of great, examples of Augmented Reality, such as Pokemon Go,the Gruffalo Trail and Snapchat but none have crossed over into the mainstream to help bring people in to public areas."

Emily and a unicorn in Adswood Park

The 15 parks featuring the Findar app are:

• Abney Hall Park, Cheadle
• Adswood Park, Cheadle Hulme
• Alexandra Park, Edgeley
• Bramhall Park, Bramhall
• Brinnington Park, Brinnington
• Bruntwood Park, Cheadle,
• Cale Green Park, Stockport
• Great Moor Park, Stockport
• Heaton Moor Park, Heaton Moor
• Marple Memorial Park, Marple
• Reddish Vale Country Park, Reddish
• Romiley Park, Romiley
• Torkington Park, Hazel Grove
• Vernon Park, Stockport
• Woodbank Park, Offerton

Check out the news item on Stockport Council's website for more information.

You can download the Findar app on the Google Play Store.

Adswood Park is a nice small park straddling the Cheadle Hulme / Cheadle border close to Cheadle Heath. Last year we found out the park used to be home to a Miniature Golf course!

We're also part-way through visiting all the parks and green spaces in the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport after the Friends of Alexandra Park suggested it as a pleasant way to pass the time. We've been to eleven out of the 33 listed so far, plus eight that were not on the list.

Related blog posts:
- Adswood Park
- Cheadle Hulme
- Stockport
- App

Check out my latest guest blog post on Minigolfnews

Visit Minigolfnews to read my latest guest blog post for the site. It's about us reaching another big minigolf milestone - the 800th course visit on the Crazy World of Minigolf Tour.

At Swing by Golfbaren in Stockholm, Sweden last month. The course became the 800th visited on our Crazy World of Minigolf Tour. Read all about the visit in my guest blog post on Minigolfnews

New Mighty Claws Adventure Golf course at Playgolf Colchester

The team at Mighty Claws Adventure Golf are almost ready for play to tee-off at their new second site and storyline in Colchester - A Roman Ruckus!

The new dinosaur adventure golf course, Mighty Claws Adventures: a Roman Ruckus is set to open in Colchester in mid April, featuring state-of-the-art, animatronic large scale dinosaurs, a thundering waterfall and an ancient Roman fortress.

The brand is the brainchild of Allan Saud, and the interactive, 18-hole Mighty Claws Adventure Golf course is an immersive play environment, adapted from the children's story book series 'Mighty Claws Adventures' by Nat Luurtsema.

The first Mighty Claws Adventure Golf course opened at Playgolf Bournemouth last Spring. The courses feature giant dinosaurs including Troodon, Ankylosaurus, Stegosaurus and Parasaurolophus as well as a small herd of Velociraptors and big, intimidating T-Rex.

This time players find themselves in an exciting Roman adventure - appropriate for such a centre of Roman history as Colchester.

The 18-hole Mighty Claws Adventure Golf course will be open from 10am until dusk, seven days a week at Playgolf Colchester.

Check out the Mighty Claws Adventure Golf website for more information.

We're looking forward to playing the course on our Crazy World of Minigolf Tour. We've been to Colchester quite a few times and visited the minigolf courses in the town's Castle Park and Gardens. Sadly we've never played a single shot there as the courses were never open when we swung by.

This was one of the minigolf courses we visited in Colchester. We never once saw it open to play. It was removed in 2015

Links:
- Mighty Claws Adventure Golf
- Playgolf Colchester

Related blog posts:
- Mighty Claws Adventure Golf
- Adventure Golf
- Colchester
- Playgolf
- Essex

Pirate Bay Easter Open minigolf competition in Guernsey

The Pirate Bay Adventure Golf course in Guernsey is hosting the inaugural Pirate Bay Easter Open minigolf competition this week until the 10th April.

The tournament is open to all, with players submitting their scores between the 24th March and the 10th April. 20 children and 20 adults will then make 'the cut' and be invited to compete in the grand final on the 15th April.

Thanks to my mate and minigolf rival Tiger Pragnell for letting me know about the event.

Find out more on the Pirate Bay Adventure Golf website.

We're looking forward to visiting Guernsey and having a round on the new course. My fellow minigolf enthusiast played the course last year and guest blogged about it here on the Ham and Egger Files.

Pirate Bay Adventure Golf is located at The Golf Club @ St Pierre Park, Guernsey.

Bognor Regis Mini Golf is 25 years old

Many congratulations to the team at Bognor Regis Mini Golf on reaching the BIG minigolf milestone of 25 years in business!

Emily and I played the 18-hole Arnold Palmer Crazy Golf course at Waterloo Gardens in Bognor Regis back in October 2011. It became the 275th course played on our Crazy World of Minigolf Tour.

In our match-up Emily beat me 39-42 with a start of two Aces in a row. However this was followed by two 3's, but she still scored an 'out' of 18. Some superb play on a superb Crazy Golf course.

Check out the Bognor Regis Mini Golf Facebook Page for more info.

Minigolf Summit 2018

The first-ever Minigolf Summit is taking place in Costa Nova, Portugal this May.

The team at Minigolfe in Portugal are incredibly keen to get the word out about minigolf and are putting in a lot of effort to promote the sport. Last year saw Portugal's first-ever Minigolf Tour take place over three events at courses in the Azores, Vilamoura and Costa Nova.

This year the team are organising the first-ever Minigolf Summit in Costa Nova. The summit will see events take place between the 19th and 29th of May, including:

• The 22nd edition of the XXII Palheiros da Costa Nova tournament
• Meetings and events to discuss inclusion of players of all ages and abilities
• The European Deaf Minigolf Open tournament
• Minigolf School Sports Challenge
• The first-ever minigolf tournament for the blind

Check out the Minigolf Summit website for more information.

Mini Golf at FTW in Chicago

Checking out the indoor minigolf course at FTW in Chicago.

The Water Tower first hole at FTW in Chicago

While in Chicago Emily made course visit #807 on our Crazy World of Minigolf Tour when she swung by FTW Chicago at 322 East Illinois Street.

The indoor minigolf course at FTW - known as City Golf - is a 6-hole course themed on the Windy City.

Hole 1 - Water Tower

Hole 2 - Lake Shore Drive

Hole 2

Hole 2

Hole 3 - the Legendary Chicago Theatre

Hole 4

Hole 4 - Museum Campus

Hole 4

Hole 4

Hole 5 - Comiskey Park

Hole 5

Hole 5

Hole 6 - The Willis Tower

Hole 6

As well as the miniature golf course FTW aka For The Win is home to over 130 arcade and prize games, four private party rooms, a 104 sq ft HD LED wall, a full bar and gastropub.

Check out the FTW website for more information, opening times and prices.

There are also For The Win locations in Albany, New York and Denver, Colorado. Back in 2009 I actually played tenpin bowling at FTW's Lucky Strike Lanes!

We've now visited 807 minigolf courses on our Crazy World of Minigolf Tour, 38 of them have been overseas.

Link:
- FTW Chicago

Related blog posts:
- USA
- Crazy World of Minigolf Tour

The start, middle and end of Crazy Golf

A look back at the old Crazy Golf course at King's Parade Gardens in New Brighton.

The start hole of the colourful old concrete Crazy Golf course in New Brighton

I love minigolf history and the stories in the game. While looking back through our photo archive some snaps from a visit to New Brighton caught my eye and I thought the course was worth posting about again.

The 9th

On our 12 year journey around the UK we've seen a lot of minigolf courses, some of which are no longer there. The King's Parade Gardens Crazy Golf course is one of them.

End of the line

There are now two 18-hole Adventure Golf course in King's Parade Gardens, they are certainly worth a play and very different to the old course.

Related blog posts:
- New Brighton
- Crazy Golf
- Kings Parade Gardens - Crazy Golf & Mini Golf - New Brighton