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Flying High at Chester

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Fed up of M6 Traffic Jams? – Travel the Chester Way

High flying Chester club was thinking ( laterally and vertically ) of ways to make next season even more exciting. Why not take a seaplane trip from the River Dee up to the estuary of the River Crake to play the eponymous club? Or a helicopter ride to Pendle to avoid both the M6 and the M65?

Chester’s new team transport

As a winter social outing, 18 members of Chester club visited the Aviation Park at near by Broughton to learn more about the airfield where Wellington bombers were assembled in WW2 and now a whole variety of planes are parked. The privately owned small planes and helicopters we expected but were staggered to discover the airfield was a dumping ground for a multitude of planes from the former USSR. Some were complete but others were in bits.

Executive transport for secretary Dawson

In the Spring we are planning a second Broughton outing – to see and learn about the 21st century technology used in the manufacture of Airbus wings.

Not sure it will improve our croquet but it was good fun”

Looking for spares

Chester Runner Up in Secretary’s Shield

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St Albans beat Chester 5-2 in the final of the Secretary’s Shield on Saturday 19th October: match played at Kenilworth.

John Dawson representing the CA presents the Secretary’s Shield to Chris Frost

The Secretary’s Shield Final was held at Kenilworth between St Albans and Chester on 19th October, the final having to be rearranged when the previous fixture had been rained off.  The teams had met two weeks previously in the 3rd/4th play-off in the Longman Cup.

In the morning session Chester’s Brian Walton achieved his Silver Merit award by taking his second ball through all 12 hoops and winning his game but St Albans won the doubles and the second singles match to take a 2-1 lead at lunch.  In the afternoon session all the games were close (including one going to a golden hoop) with St Albans winning 3 of the matches to win the final by a score of 5-2.

John Dawson from the CA committee presented the trophy to Chris Frost the St Albans Captain.

Results (St Albans names first):
Chris Frost (3.5) & Stuart Stafford (16) beat John Dawson (3) & Robin Tasker (5) 26-11;
Heather Bennett (3.5) beat David Boyd 26-22;
Stephen Mills (11) lost to Brian Walton (8) 26-9;
Chris Frost (3.5) beat John Dawson (3) 26-21;
Heather Bennett (3.5) lost to Robin Tasker (5) 20-19T;
Stephen Mills (11) beat David Boyd 26-24;
Stuart Stafford (16) beat Brian Walton (8) 26-17.

St Albans team with the Secretary’s Shield

Watch the Best of North West Croquet

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Watch the best of the North West
Forget the rugby, forget the weekend shopping watch the best of the North West as Bowdon and Chester take on the best of the South East at sunny Surbiton for fame and fortune in the AC Mary Rose and Longman trophies this weekend . Bring http://www.surbitoncroquet.org.uk/ up on your computers to watch your local heroes

Eugene has been off on holiday and so is unable to bring his equipment to Surbiton to stream the finals this weekend.
The Surbiton Web-cams will however be on-line.  They can be accessed through the club website http://www.surbitoncroquet.org.uk/
There are 3 separate live streams:
Lawn 1 – which will be used for the Mary Rose final on Saturday and the Interclub final on SundayLawn 2 – which will be used for the Mary Rose final on Saturday and the Interclub final on SundayLawn 3 – which will be used for the Longmann semi-final on Saturday and final on Sunday.
Play in the Longman & Mary Rose is scheduled to start at 09:30 whilst the Interclub will start at 10:30.

The webcams are part of the clubs CCTV security system (although they are pointed at lawns rather than areas to protect the clubhouse and equipment sheds).
The original one was put up primarily to enable members to see the state of the lawns (after say heavy rain) and to see if anyone else is at the club for those that don’t like being the only person there.
They are available 24/7 through a streaming service that offers a ‘free’ package but with the restriction that the video is not full HD, there is no sound and the viewer needs to ‘reclick’ play every few minutes to keep the stream playing.
It is therefore not as good as a specific event streaming service through something like U-Tube that Eugene Chang uses for his broadcasts.

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