While having a wander around the Stockport Pyramid I noticed a funny sign near the gates - it must've been up for years as it had the old Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council logo on it.
NO TIPPNG
The other NO TIPPING sign on the opposite side of the driveway was spelt correctly.
NO TIPPING
Both signs are likely to be almost 30 years old. That's a long time for a typo like that to be hidden in plain sight!
The Metropolitan Borough of Stockport was founded in 1974 and the Stockport Pyramid was completed in 1992 after five years work.
Who needs the Giza Necropolis in Egypt or the Luxor in Las Vegas when you've got the Stockport Pyramid in Kings Valley.
With nowhere to go on holiday this year we've been exploring the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport even more than usual. We had a nice walk around the Stockport Pyramid and along the Trans Pennine Trail yesterday evening
The Stockport Pyramid was completed in 1992 and was originally planned to be the first of five pyramids in Stockport's own Valley of the Kings.
That plan didn't come to fruition and the Stockport Pyramid sits on in the Kings Valley industrial and trading estate next to the M60.
Until last year the Stockport Pyramid was home to The Co-operative Bank. It's now To Let.
I do like seeing quirky buildings and local follies.
The Pyramid is one of a number of superb landmarks and interesting buildings in Stockport.
A Crazy Golf course is opening at the new Flip Out trampoline and adventure centre in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.
The indoor Crazy Golf course will be among a number of activities within the attraction at the Flip Out venue opening in the old BHS shop in the town centre.
Flip Out in Aylesbury will also be home to the UK's first glow-in-the-dark ice rink!
Flip Out's Aylesbury adventure park is scheduled to opening in November this year.
We look forward to giving the Crazy Golf course a play on our Crazy World of Minigolf Tour in the future. The ice skating sounds cool too.
The countdown is on until the 2021 World Alternative Games in Llanwrtyd Wells.
The World Alternative Games were due to take place in Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales this month. The fifth edition of the Games have been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic and are now scheduled for August 2021.
The festival of strange, obscure and interesting sports takes place over three weeks and sees thousands of athletes and spectators descend on the town to compete in, and marvel at, the sporting action.
The first edition of the World Alternative Games were held in 2012 to celebrate the huge year of sport and offer an alternative to elite sport with an open-to-all event. The second edition took place in 2014 and every two years thereafter. There were 35 events in 2012 and 60 titles up for grabs in 2014.
The competitors from the first-ever Finger Jousting Championships held on UK soil back at the 2012 World Alternative Games
The Games are a superb mass participation multi-sport event and really do encourage everyone to get involved. Many spectators end up as competitors and the serious obscure sports enthusiasts very often take up a new sport after visiting.
The medalists from the 2014 Finger Jousting World Championships
Some of the sports included at previous editions include wife carrying, chariot racing, cheese rolling, pooh sticks, underwater hockey, archery, office chair racing, hay bale tossing, finger jousting, stone skimming, underwater rugby, space hopper racing, horseshoe throwing, bog snorkelling, crazy golf, worm charming, conkers, world of grip, zombie fun runs, plank racing, rock paper scissors, hide n seek and toe wrestling. There have been many many more contests and the 2021 event will be packed with a wide range of different sports and games to play.
World of Grip was a tough challenge!
I have been a competitor, volunteer, organiser, advocate and promoter of the World Alternative Games since the first event in 2012.
With my Corinthian medal from competing in the World of Grip events
I organised the World Finger Jousting Federation Championships at the first Games in 2012. Prior to that tournament I took part in the Egg Throwing Championships with my team-mate Jas Kukielka and we ended up winning the World Title!
On the World Alternative Games podium
It just goes to show that anything can happen when you're at the World Alternative Games!
As well as being the UK's smallest town Llanwrtyd Wells is famous for being the host venue for a number of quirky and unusual sports and games, including the World Bog Snorkelling Championships and the annual Man versus Horse Marathon.
A new Boom: Battle Bar venue is opening at the Brewery Quarter in Cardiff.
The second Boom: Battle Bar is opening in Cardiff's Brewery Quarter later this year. The indoor competitive socialising venue will be home to a crazy course, darts, axe throwing, ping pong, shuffleboard, VR games, arcade games and more.
Two of the things that also caught my eye about this particular Boom: Battle Bar is that it will also offer players Bar Billiards and the German game of Hammerschlagen.
Bar Billiards is a brilliant old cue sport and quite rare to find outside of the south of England and the Channel Islands.
Hammerschlagen is a game where players compete to hammer nails into a wooden beam!
The Tyne and Wear Metro light rail system is 40 years old today.
The The Tyne & Wear Metro system opened on this day in 1980. The network was opened in stages between 1980 and 1984 with the trains running on a mixture of old railway routes and new track to bespoke stations.
A Tyne & Wear Metro train crossing the Queen Elizabeth II bridge in Newcastle upon Tyne
The first route to open was Haymarket to Tynemouth.
A Tyne & Wear Metro service heading into Newcastle from Byker
Street art on the Tyne & Wear Metro
We were in Newcastle and Gateshead for the World Transplant Games last year and while in the area went Space Invader hunting. Three of the mosaic tile pieces by the French street artist Invader can be found at Gateshead Interchange Tyne & Wear Metro station.
Space Invader NCL_21 downstairs in Gateshead Interchange metro station
A closer look at Invader NCL_21
NCL_19 is above ground at Gateshead Interchange
Invader NCL_20 is deep underground at Gateshead Interchange
We teamed up with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author Dave Barry and his daughter Sophie from the USA to take part in the huge event.
The San Marino Rock Paper Scissors team
More than 150 athletes from 16 teams competed in the Wacky Nation organised tournament held at the Knight’s Templar Pub on Chancery Lane in London.
As we couldn’t play as a combined "UK-USA" team we decided to represent the plucky nation of San Marino instead.
Prior to the start of the competition I challenged football hard man Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock to a 'friendly' RPS contest to warm-up. Needless to say I won the shootout! It was an ill-tempered clash with plenty of foul language and gamesmanship. The heated battle almost resulted in a knock-out punch too!
Clash of the titans
International Rock Paper Scissors
Matches in the Round Robin stage of the main-event were played in a ‘first to four points’ format with each player in the team taking it in turns to win a point by competing in a ‘best of three’ Rock Paper Scissors game. Our team managed to rack up a win loss record of won four, lost one.
Before any teams could advance from our pool a play-off was required as Austria and Lapland A had also finished with four wins and one loss!
Thankfully our team was able to win both matches to advance alongside Lapland A, with the Austrians sent home.
The first semi-final saw San Marino take on the Vatican City team in a ‘first to six points’ match.
Unfortunately we lost and were therefore unable to go for gold.
Sadly we just missed out on the podium, suffering defeat to Great Britain in the repechage to ultimately finish in fourth place.
The final was a battle between the might of Lapland A and the Vatican City, with the Laplanders finishing on top and grabbing the gold medal.
Getting to the semi-finals of the International Rock Paper Scissors Championships was the furthest I ever reached in an RPS tournament having been knocked out in the preliminary rounds of national competitions held in 2010 and 2011.
The perfect socially distanced sport?
Thinking about it, Rock Paper Scissors could be the perfect sport to play in these time of social distancing.
As a non-contact sport it's played by opponents standing apart from each other. The distance between them could be increased to 2 metres or more, they could wear PPE without impairing their throws and/or a protective screen could be placed between the two players.
If anyone ever fancies a game of Rock Paper Scissors via a video call do let me know...
A look at two benches in the time of social distancing.
We saw a few different social distancing signs on our walk round Colne in Lancashire on Sunday afternoon, including these two on benches in the town centre.
Clockwise from top left, balls from Holeymolies, Minigolfnews, the Putter King, KISS Minigolf, the Asian Open Championships and the World Minigolf Sport Federation
As is often the way in sport you will find a wide-range of specialist equipment to use to play the game. While most people will use the club and ball provided at the course, tournament minigolfers will delve into their bag of balls to find the optimum one to make the best attempt at a hole-in-one.
In the world of competitive minigolf specialist balls are big business. 10,000+ minigolf sport balls have been produced in the last 80 years!
Each ball has different properties including bounce, hardness and surface finish and will react differently based on temperature.
These special qualities allow for a variety of shots to be played on the range of different courses and obstacles - the balls range from 'dead' where there is no bounce, through to super bouncy balls for multiple rebounds.
Sometimes though, the most important factor is whether it has a cool or interesting graphic, design or logo on it.
My next mini 'tickable list' urban exploration challenge taps into my interest in ghost signs, shops, retail marketing and old brands. Ever since I found the remnants of the Blockbuster Video store in Fallowfield, Manchester last October I've been amazed to see the brand still has a lingering presence in other places too.
My old local Blockbuster was on Park Street in Luton, Bedfordshire and while it is long-gone I still remember the amount of time I spent in it when I was a student. I built up quite a collection of big-box ex-rental VHS tapes from there in the early noughties.
Blockbuster ceased operations in the UK in December 2013 so it's amazing that there are still clearly visible remnants of the brand on the high street and on retail parks almost seven years later.
Blockbuster Video and Express stores
Blockbuster Video entered the UK video rental market in 1989 following the purchase of Ritz Video.
I remember going to the Ritz Video shop on the Peachcroft Estate in my home town of Abingdon, Oxfordshire back in the late 80's and early 90's. That store became a Blockbuster and I rented some classics from there back in the day. Check out this post from the excellent Abingdon Blog to see a photo of the shuttered shop in 2014.
Blockbuster Video Express stores were somewhat smaller than regular Blockbuster shops. Although all of the stores expanded to include video game rentals. Old signage for the games area has been clearly visible on both the Fallowfield and Colne stores I've been to.
In 2013 there were over 500 Blockbuster locations in the UK. Throughout that year the number dwindled until October when only 264 shops remained. On the 16th December 2013 all stores ceased operations.
Blockbuster Video Express in Colne
While looking online for nearby places to have a wander during the local lockdown here in the north west I stumbled upon the Blockbuster Video Express in Colne, Lancashire.
It's crazy to see the store in person as Colne's main street is quite a busy thoroughfare and the prominently positioned Blockbuster was the only empty shop we saw in that particular part of the town.
You should've seen the size of the fine for taking back Police Academy almost seven years late. And I hadn't rewound it
A view of the store from Market Street
The old QuikDrop box has been sealed and painted over
The box is still in place though
It's always nice to see old CRT TVs in place
A view of the right hand side of the store. The Häagen-Dazs fridge is still there
The left side, till area and games wall. Note the Coca-Cola and Ben & Jerry's fridges towards the back of the store too
The games wall
A letter about the Administration. That was a good printer and high quality paper to have lasted so long. The Blockbuster branded tape looks in great condition as well
Still sticky
Blockbuster Video Express in Westcliff on Sea
Last month my friend and fellow blogger Mark Routh kindly sent me some super snaps of the old Blockbuster Video Express store in Westcliff on Sea, Essex. I'm looking forward to seeing it in person next time I'm down that way.
The Last Blockbuster
The very last Blockbuster Video store in operation is in Bend, Oregon, USA. We were planning a holiday to Portland this year and would've called in to the store on the trip.
Hopefully it'll still be there when it's once again safe to travel to the USA.
These are some of the best medals I've ever won playing minigolf. They came from competing in tournaments at the 2012 Oswestry Games in Shropshire.
The Gold was from the BMGA & Putterfingers Oswestry Games Minigolf Championship and the Bronze medal was from the BMGA Oswestry Games Pro-Am Minigolf Classic. The silver medal was won by Emily in the Pro-Am team competition.
The Oswestry Games were a superb multi-sports event and festival of sport. They tapped into the Olympic spirit of London 2012.
I’m a Champion Miniature Golfer on a tour of the UK’s minigolf and crazy golf courses. Coeliac living a gluten free life. Train nerd. Retro gamer. Urban explorer.
